This review symposium issue brings together scholars to engage with the findings presented in our recent book Education for Sustainable Development in an Unequal World: Biopolitics, Differentiation and Affirmative Alternatives. Adopting a comparative biopolitical approach, the book explores how Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is enacted in different socio-economic and geographical contexts around the world and how inequality is managed in these processes. In this opening piece, we first introduce the book and its central arguments. We then highlight several themes that, while addressed in the book, we believe merit further scholarly attention. These include the complex interplay of different inequalities; subtle articulations of coloniality and the 'Malthus effect'; the potential for a democratic biopolitics; and alternative attributions of community - all considered within the broader context of the global ESD enterprise and its peculiar combination of biopolitical inclusion and separation.
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in teacher education is widely recognized as a key context for advancing sustainability, yet empirical research has often examined sustainability-related attitudes and dispositions in isolation. This study adopts an integrative approach to examine how empathy, prosocial behavior, sustainable consumer behavior, and responsibility are associated with attitudes toward sustainable development (ASD). Using validated self-report instruments, data were collected from 330 student teachers and analyzed through reliability testing, correlational analyses, and domain-specific multiple regression models. The findings confirm that ASD is a multidimensional construct characterized by distinct yet overlapping patterns of psychological and behavioral correlates across environmental, economic, social, and educational domains. Empathy (both affective and cognitive), prosocial behavioral tendencies, environmentally conscious consumption, and feelings of moral responsibility were consistently associated with stronger ASD, although their relative contributions varied by domain. Prosocial behavior emerged as a salient correlate of the social and educational dimensions of ASD, while responsibility and sustainable consumption were more strongly linked to environmental and economic orientations. Gender showed a small but significant association with the educational domain, underscoring heterogeneity within student teacher populations. By modeling multiple correlates simultaneously, this study extends existing ESD research beyond fragmented analyses. The results highlight the value of operationalizing prosociality as a multidimensional construct and offer original empirical insights to inform the design of responsive and inclusive ESD curricula in teacher education.
Climate-related emotions, attitudes, and self-efficacy are increasingly recognized as interlinked drivers of adolescents' pro-environmental behavior, yet evidence on their joint role across cultural contexts remains limited. This study explores the interplay between climate-related emotions, attitudes, and pro-environmental behaviors among secondary school students from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. It is based on previous studies focused on eco-anxiety, eco-guilt, and environmental hope of students in various countries, as well as research investigating the factors influencing human pro-environmental behavior. Collecting data from 17-year-old students in October 2022 (N = 6,477), it analyzed the role of climate-related emotions in shaping students' behaviors and actions. Based on the findings, while eco-anxiety and climate change attitudes were linked to habitual pro-environmental behaviors (e.g. recycling, energy conservation), their impact on deliberate pro-environmental actions was indirect, mediated by environmental self-efficacy and eco-guilt. Environmental self-efficacy emerged as the strongest predictor of pro-environmental behavior. While girls exhibited a higher level of almost all emotions than boys, country differences had no practical significance. Based on these findings, the study emphasizes the importance of fostering students' environmental self-efficacy and equipping them with coping strategies with climate-related emotions.
The escalating environmental concerns highlight the need for educational approaches that engage children with ecological relations in everyday environments. The integration of art and science can connect learners with natural processes through experiential and multimodal practices. This study examines how children articulated ecological understanding through embodied, material, and imaginative engagement in art-science integrated activities during a 'Nature and Science' summer camp in Northern Finland. The camp was situated in a forest-rich region where forests are integral to everyday life and debates on sustainability and resource use. The study draws on art-based action research, in which artistic activity functions as both pedagogy and research data. The analysis approaches learning situations as embodied, material, and collaborative processes in which artworks and interpretations developed through activity. The camp included recycled papermaking, sensory forest activities, and exploration at a science center. Data included observations, children's artworks, field notes, photographs, and teacher interviews. The analysis identified three recurring forms of articulation: (1) sensory encounters with forest environments, (2) the transformation of recycled paper through collaborative making, (3) connections described across activities during interdisciplinary exploration. Ecological understanding developed through engagement with materials, places, and activities, as pupils connected experiences across forest exploration, recycled papermaking, artistic creation, and science-center investigations. The children's artworks and reflections referred to continuity, renewal, vulnerability, and care, while positioning themselves as participants, protectors, and co-inhabitants in relation to forest environments. The findings show how art-science activities can support children's ecological meaning-making through material engagement, imagination, and interdisciplinary exploration.
