Science education is increasingly integrating a focus on socio-scientific issues. Policy makers and scholars also suggest education for sustainable development (ESD) is important for tackling current and future sustainability issues. ESD may foster students' action competence in sustainable development (ACiSD; knowledgeability, willingness,…

Teachers' instructional beliefs and interests in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) are related to holistic, pluralistic, and action-oriented instructional practices in ESD teaching. To explore this hypothesis, we examine teachers' ESD teaching profiles based on their instructional beliefs, interests, and instructional practices in ESD.…

Education for sustainable development aims at strengthening levels of knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours beneficial for sustainable development which are crucial to tackle urgent sustainability-related global challenges. In this study, we present the results of a one-year panel study measuring levels of sustainable development knowledge,…

Within citizen science projects, learning about natural resources can encourage environmentally friendly behaviour. More empirical understanding is needed on how citizen science projects facilitate learning outcomes to support sustainable resource management, such as agrobiodiversity. Here we present the learning outcomes of a citizen science…

Belgian primary schools very rarely adopt an outdoor learning approach. Yet most geography and science teacher trainers involved in pre-service teacher training see the environment around schools as a resource on which to develop learning in all disciplines, and a place to develop environmental and eco-citizenship education. Training teachers to…

Climate change education (CCE) brings about existential concerns of students. Teachers in turn are confronted with didactic demands to take into account the existential challenge climate change elicits. However, conceptual haziness about how to understand 'the existential' in CCE complicates didactic research on the topic, impedes researchers to…

Based on the concept of action competence, the current study introduces an integrated framework of Professional Action Competence in Education for Sustainable Development (PACesd) described by three defining features: willingness, knowledge of pedagogical approaches, and self-efficacy. To validate this framework, we developed a questionnaire…

Young students have raised their voices in debates on what action for sustainable development (SD) is necessary. Nevertheless, research that gives voice to 10 to 13-year-olds while looking into SD issues in all their complexity of interrelated environmental, social, and socio-economic perspectives, is scarce. This study aims to give voice to these…

Action competence consists of the knowledge, willingness, and self-efficacy for contributing to a controversial issue such as sustainable development. As such, action competence in sustainable development (ACiSD) is a desired outcome of education for sustainable development (ESD). Still, the scarce instruments for measuring ACiSD that have been…

Holistic and pluralistic instructional beliefs and instructional practices in Education for Sustainable Development are often considered of high importance to foster students' competences. This mixed-method study describes the development and the validation of the Holism-Pluralism in Education for Sustainable Development questionnaire (HPESD-Q) to…

Relying on a nudge--a simple, non-paternalistic tool that spontaneously triggers behaviours in a volitional, predictable and expected way--as an education instrument, and more particularly relying on social labelling, this paper demonstrates that an extremely frugal protocol can foster children's intentions to behave pro-environmentally. In an…

Ocean literacy is an understanding of the ocean's influence on us and our influence on the ocean. A lack of ocean literacy presents a significant obstacle for citizens to engage in environmentally sustainable behaviour, and thus is acknowledged as a 'complex problem' that requires deliberative participation and joint-action by stakeholders across…

This paper provides critical reflections on higher education for sustainable development (HESD) from a philosophical perspective. A theoretical framework is developed, based on John Dewey's thoughts on the aim of democracy and the critical role of education herein, and with specific focus on two constructs: 'initiative and adaptability' and…

We present results from a large-scale study performed in Flanders, focusing on the effectiveness of the eco-schools project. We surveyed 2152 students and 1374 teachers in 101 primary and secondary schools that are actively engaged in the eco-schools program at different stages (including control schools), focusing on their environmental values,…

Farm education organized by farmers and directed towards students and groups of citizens is a relatively new practice often considered as one specific business strategy to diversify farmers' income. Although we endorse the importance of an economic rationale we argue that this conceptualization undermines a diversity of perspectives on educative…