The goal of education for sustainable development is to develop future citizens who can make informed decision and take responsible action to solve the problem. The concept of action competence proposed by Jensen and Schnack in 1997, which emerges as a critical thought from traditional environmental education, gradually attracts the attention with the maturing on the idea of sustainability. This research aims to systematically analyse the peer-reviewed studies published between 1997 and 2017 that embraced the concept of action competence as the instructional approach. After coding 170 articles from two quality databases, some patterns emerge from the year of publication in the resulting 34 empirical studies. Findings on the research design, pathway of intervention, instructional setting, and learning outcome increase our understanding of action competence applied in the authentic context. There is a sharp increase on the inter-disciplinary topic of sustainable development. It reflects the influence of the intergovernmental agreement and the resilience of action competence from environmental education to education for sustainable development. Reviewed studies indicate that action-oriented and transformative pedagogy cultivate students to be active participants, empower their capability of deliberating the causes and effects, and construct their visions for finding strategies toward the problems.

The aim of this nationwide survey was to assess undergraduate students’ environmental literacy level in Taiwan. A total of 29,498 valid responses were received from a number of selected colleges and universities in Taiwan, using stratified random sampling method. A total of 70 items were used to assess the environmental literacy and the results revealed that undergraduate students had a relatively low level of environmental knowledge and behavior, while a moderate level of environmental attitudes was attained. The findings also indicated no significant correlations between knowledge and attitudes or between knowledge and behavior. However, a higher level of environmental knowledge correlated significantly with a higher degree of pro-environmental behavior, and a higher level of environmental knowledge correlated with stronger attitudes. The results also suggested that females outperformed the males in all categories. Results from this study could contribute towards further relevant policy discussion and decision-making, curriculum design and development to the improvement of environmental education in the higher education sector.

Examining and developing courses of education for sustainable development (ESD) is the goal of this study. Building on the theory of game-based learning, this study develops teaching strategies that employ board games for ESD. The design context of the board game, entitled “Be Blessed Taiwan”, is situated in the dilemma between biological conservation and economic development. It incorporates four core systemic concepts: the economy, policies, society, and ecology. Students from two high schools played the game for 200 min and 400 min, respectively (100 min per week). The study collected complete pre-game and post-game data from 34 high school students, including the test of scientific concepts, and gameplay results. The research results indicate that students’ test scores significantly increased after the gameplay with a medium effect size; specifically, a large effect on the dimension of biodiversity concepts and a medium effect on the dimension of biological conservation concepts. The analysis of students’ gameplay results shows the difficulty for high-school students to achieve all four ESD goals.

During the Japanese colonial period, Taiwan had a medical school education system for cultivating physicians, but did not have a dental school education system for cultivating “real” dentists. In this investigation, we collected and analyzed the historical documents related to dental education to study the development of dental education for medical students in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period. This study mainly analyzed the changes in the development of dental education for medical students in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period through the collection and sorting of relevant historical materials. During each stage of Taiwan's medical education system in the Japanese colonial period, the medical school offered compulsory dental courses for medical students, including theory and clinical practice of dentistry. Although there was no specific dental subject included in the graduation examination, evidence showed that the content of dentistry was covered by the subject of Surgery in the examination. Moreover, Taipei Imperial University established the Medical Faculty in 1936. Its curriculum increased the weight of dentistry and added the “Dentistry & Oral Surgery” as a graduation examination subject, indicating the importance of dental education for medical students in that period. In the Japanese colonial period, although there was no dental school for cultivating dentists in Taiwan, there was still dental education for medical students to let them understand the Dentistry and to enable them to become dental practitioners. This can be regarded as a workaround in the medical and healthcare policy.