Through Target 4.7 of SDG4 on 'quality education', Agenda 2030 invites governments to take ownership of progress towards ensuring 'Education for Sustainable Development' (ESD) becomes embedded into all levels of education. However, conceptual analysis suggests an ongoing blindspot related to the significance of systems literacy in fostering the…

This paper uses the concept of glocality to illuminate the ways in which the global operates as a hegemonic social construct for settler and colonial states to infiltrate and repress other local epistemological domains to assert and maintain control. Identifying four prominent and interconnected themes in the glocality literature: developing deep…

Recent studies claimed that the absence of a paradigm is a challenge to developing education for sustainable development and soft skills competencies. This integrative study examines stimulating these transferable and transversal competencies through constructivist approaches to teaching from the cognitive, social, radical, and critical…

This study interrogates how one of the least-studied regional intergovernmental organisations, the African Union (AU), operationalises or recontextualises the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the process of developing its post-2015 education and development strategies. Employing critical discourse analysis and drawing on…

In this article, I ask what becoming a sustainable visual arts teacher might look like, and how a sustainable teaching practice might be created. The problem for education, and teachers' becoming, is that formal schooling presumes how life should be lived there, how the assemblage of learning should be composed and the prescribed identities of…

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Higher Education Conference in Barcelona was an occasion for the authors of this article to reflect on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in general and SDG 4: education, specifically, pondering over its role and impact on student development in the Global South and…

Education has an important role to play in advancing the green transition and building a sustainable future for Europe's societies and economies. This Eurydice report examines how European countries integrate learning for sustainability in teaching and school life in 39 education systems. The report investigates which sustainability-related…

Sustainable Livelihoods are more adaptable than precarious jobs, for career development through Decent Work. An essential element for Career Sustainability is Climate action, that includes Just Transitions from carbon-intensive to carbon-neutral or regenerative work. This paper analyses a municipal transition from coal-mining to a more…

University-based curriculum development often involves adding new content. This 'just add' approach has also been applied to integrating the UN SDGs into curricula, reducing them to a checklist rather than embracing their holistic and transformative aims. This is particularly concerning for SDG 4 and SDG 4.7, which require deep, cross-cutting…

There is an urgent need for global citizens to develop sustainable development competencies (SDCs) if our world is to survive threats to its development and sustainability. These competencies can be developed through education for sustainable development (ESD). However, implementing ESD is challenged by teachers' and students' prioritisation of…

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education is pivotal in fostering innovation and promoting Germany's position in global industries and in several sectors. This paper explores selected cases of STEM education and STEM related VET in Germany, focusing on how learning outcomes are aligned with the evolving demands of a…

Purpose: This viewpoint paper addresses the use of sustainability frameworks in embedding education for sustainability into the curriculum of higher education institutions (HEIs). The purpose of this paper is to explore the paradox that sustainability frameworks must facilitate transformation of existing structures whilst also being well-enough…

This article connects instrumental, emancipatory, and critical approaches to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) with the different cultural responses or grand narratives of the Anthropocene: eco-modernist, eco-catastrophist, and eco-socialist. The tensions between these different approaches are explained by ESD's reliance on the ideals of…

This article develops a model of education from Murray Bookchin's social ecology by demonstrating how "the economy," specifically growth and employment, intervenes between the environment and education, impeding the goal of environmental education. By reformulating Bookchin's central claim in terms of power, rather than domination, the…

We integrate work from human development, psychology, education, and neuroscience to argue for five interrelated developmental principles that together provide the conceptual basis for a fundamental shift in thinking in education about the nature of learning, and hence the work of teaching, and the purpose and design of schools and youth-facing…