Education for Sustainable Development Awareness, Attitudes, and Actions: A Quantitative Study of In-service Teachers in Vietnam

In the context of growing global and national efforts to integrate sustainability into teacher education, understanding how teachers perceive and enact the Sustainable Development Goals is essential for strengthening education for sustainable development. This study investigated the awareness, attitudes, and actions of 158 Vietnamese in-service teachers across the economic, social, and environmental domains of the Sustainable Development Goals. A 51-item questionnaire grounded in UNESCO’s learning objectives for the 17 Sustainable Development Goals was administered using a four-point Likert scale, and the mean interpretive scale adapted from Alico and Guimba (2015) was used for interpretation. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and one-way ANOVA in SPSS 26. Findings revealed high levels of awareness and attitudes, but only moderate-to-high levels of action. The lowest scores were observed for for Sustainable Development Goal 10 in awareness, Sustainable Development Goal 5 in attitudes, and Sustainable Development Goal 14 in actions. Although awareness and attitudes were strongly correlated, their associations with actions were considerably weaker, indicating a persistent attitude-action gap. No significant differences were found across gender or teaching levels. These results highlight a clear knowledge-practice gap and suggest that teacher education programs in Vietnam should more explicitly integrate locally relevant sustainability issues, participatory pedagogies, and institutional support structures to translate teachers’ strong cognitive and affective orientations into consistent classroom practice.