Climate change is threatening humanity’s existence. Youth have the potential and capability to contribute to tackling climate change. The current study aims to examine how school and family environmental education can enhance environmental knowledge, willingness to act, and pro-environmental behaviours among children and young people. The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was utilised on a nationally representative dataset of 2069 Vietnamese primary, secondary, and high school students. The analysis suggests that school- and family-based environmental education is beneficial for improving students’ environmental knowledge and willingness to take environmental action. Notably, the effect of school education is more substantial for cultivating environmental knowledge, whereas family education has a stronger impact on raising students’ willingness to act. Students with better environmental knowledge are more likely to engage in pro-environmental behaviours only when they are willing to act. If students are unwilling, higher environmental knowledge is negatively associated with pro-environmental behaviour. Building on these findings, we advocate for coordinated educational efforts between schools and families to strengthen students’ environmental knowledge, pro-environmental intentions, and behaviours. Furthermore, we emphasise the need for Vietnam’s education system to gradually shift away from didactic, top-down methods toward more experiential, interdisciplinary, and student-centred approaches that support transformative environmental learning and nurture an eco-surplus culture.
This study explores how preservice social studies teachers conceive ecological citizenship and evaluates a curriculum-embedded ecological citizenship model intended to cultivate environmentally responsible citizens. Employing a grounded theory approach, data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis, with concurrent coding and comparative analysis guiding model development. Participants articulated ecological consciousness as the core category, supported by related themes of a liveable world, a beacon of hope, future generations' welfare and holistic perspectives on nature. The resultant model identifies families and schools as joint stewards of ecological citizenship, beginning with foundational environmental education at home and extending into targeted social studies activities. The refined ecological citizenship model elucidates how its components - rights, justice, responsibility and participation - progressively foster environmental action and tangible improvements. The study concludes with recommendations for embedding ecological citizenship within teacher education and, school curricula, offering guidance on assessment strategies such as reflective journals and pre-post evaluations to monitor both behavioural and ecological outcomes. This concise framework provides conceptual clarity and actionable guidance for educators and curriculum designers.
Modern Western education has been criticised for its human-centred orientation and for legitimising the exploitation of nature, thereby contributing to the environmental crisis. This article responds by rethinking a specific Northern European strand of the Bildung tradition, namely the modern critical-constructive approach associated with Humboldt and Klafki, as a pedagogical framework concerned with how teaching and educational practices could and should support processes of self-formation. Drawing on reflections from an international Wild Pedagogies (WP) gathering in Sweden, we engage the WP concept of Nature as Co-Teacher to develop three re-imaginations of critical-constructive approaches to Bildung. First, we reimagine Bildung as dialogical co-development in a more-than-human world. Second, we reimagine Bildung as place-specific pedagogical practices oriented towards engagement with, in, and for the living world. Third, we reimagine Bildung within a nature-, place-, and life-centred horizon in which the living world provides the highest context of meaning and value. Together, these re-imaginations contribute to ongoing debates in Environmental and Sustainability Education and related fields about how pedagogical traditions can respond to the challenges of the Anthropocene.
This study investigates the environmental literacy (EL) and pro-environmental behaviours of urban adolescents in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with a focus on the role of education in shaping their environmental awareness, attitudes, and actions. The research aims to assess students’ knowledge of global and local environmental issues, their attitudinal orientations (biocentric vs. anthropocentric), and their self-reported pro-environmental behaviours. A cross-sectional survey of 403 secondary school students was conducted using structured questionnaires. The findings reveal moderate awareness of global environmental issues like climate change, but a limited understanding of local ecological solutions. While many students expressed positive attitudes toward nature, a significant value-action gap was identified, with environmental awareness and concern not consistently translating into sustainable practices. The study highlights the need for more context-specific, experiential, and community-based educational interventions to bridge this gap. By integrating emotional, cognitive, and ethical dimensions of EL into curricula, the study suggests that educators and policymakers can better equip youth to address environmental challenges. The findings emphasise the urgency of reforming environmental education to foster a generation of environmentally responsible citizens in developing urban contexts.
Feminist environmental educators have been calling for new ways of dismantling traditional separations such as nature-culture for reconfiguring human-environment relations. The Common Worlds Research Collective is an interdisciplinary research network made up of educators and researchers that conduct feminist and anticolonial pedagogical and methodological work concerned with more-than-human worlds. This visual essay takes inspiration from the inventive ways the Common Worlds Research Collective are thinking and practising with concepts. This visual essay introduces commoning, worlding and inheriting as concepts for rethinking practice. It shows how re-viewing photographic documentation taken of a waste project with young children and educators opens up pedagogical possibilities for attending to children's complex and entangled relations with waste. This visual essay demonstrates how creative, experimental and feminist methods can reconfigure children's relations with waste and invites educators to apply these approaches in their own contexts.
Global environmental crises, including climate change, biodiversity loss and resource depletion disproportionately affect communities in the Global South, where environmental vulnerability intersects with social and cultural inequalities. In rural North Sindh, Pakistan, these pressures shape everyday livelihoods and community practices through which environmental knowledge is transmitted across generations. Yet formal environmental education often overlooks these informal learning spaces. This study examines how family and community-based environmental and sustainability education cultivates action competence by integrating knowledge, motivation and action skills in a non-Western agrarian context. Guided by the Action Competence Approach as a theoretical and conceptual framework, the research employed a convergent parallel mixed-methods design within participatory action research. Data from 120 participants in Sukkur and Shikarpur were collected through surveys, interviews, focus groups and workshops. Findings show moderate-to-high action competence (M = 3.82/5), with strong environmental motivation and knowledge fostered through intergenerational storytelling, while action skills remain constrained by infrastructural and rural-urban disparities.
This study investigates how rural women’s leadership, grounded in traditional knowledge and daily ecological practices, contributes to environmental education and strengthens both family and community sustainability within the emerging model of rural tourism in Morocco. The research is framed by international environmental commitments, notably the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which emphasise the value of local communities in preserving natural resources and transmitting ecological knowledge. The central question examines the extent to which rural women, through their leadership and embodied knowledge, foster environmental learning and reinforce the socio-ecological resilience of households and communities. The study mobilises theoretical approaches from environmental education, experiential and social learning and socio-ecological systems theory to analyse the interplay between knowledge transfer, community engagement and biodiversity protection. Methodologically, the research adopts a qualitative design based on semi-structured interviews, participant observation and thematic analysis supported by NVivo software. Conducted in the Taounate region, the study targets women participating in rural ecotourism initiatives. Findings reveal that women act as key agents of informal environmental education, ensuring the transmission of traditional knowledge, promoting sustainable practices and enhancing collective ecological awareness. Their leadership reinforces natural resource conservation and contributes to the long-term sustainability of families and local communities while aligning local practices with global environmental commitments positioning them as essential actors in bridging local practices with global environmental sustainability agendas.
This study investigates how school leaders interpret and mobilize the traits and competencies required to initiate Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in school contexts. Using a qualitative single-case study design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight school leaders involved in the Johor Sustainable Education Action Plan (JSEAP). Thematic analysis reveals three interrelated dimensions of leadership practice: a positive orientation towards change, substantive ESD-related knowledge and interpersonal competence. Rather than operating as static attributes, these dimensions emerge as relational and contextually shaped capacities, developed through leaders’ ongoing engagement with institutional constraints, policy expectations and school-level realities. The findings suggest that early-stage ESD leadership is less a matter of technical readiness than a process of situated sense-making, in which leaders negotiate meaning, capability and context simultaneously. This study advances ESD scholarship beyond competency frameworks towards a more complex understanding of how sustainability-oriented change is initiated in schools.
This article examines the growing importance of cultural studies in supporting the increasing development of socio-cultural awareness among students in the higher education sector in the United Arab Emirates. It adopts a descriptive quantitative methodology, which involves conducting two questionnaires. They involved 11 instructors teaching cultural studies and 85 students attending their curricula. A random sampling technique was used in this study, where all instructors and students participated equally. Main findings indicated that 85% of instructors agreed that cultural studies play a significant role in promoting socio-cultural awareness among students. Additionally, the students’ questionnaire highlighted how they perceive cultural studies depending on their ability to foster, appreciate, and understand the value of coexistence, and the role of cultural studies in shaping their communicative and life skills. Finally, the study concludes that the need for the development of cultural studies courses is essential, aiming at adopting more effective strategies that promote students’ awareness in relation to future challenges.
How do young people conceive of their ability to meaningfully contribute to climate change action? Adopting a social-ecological perspective, and situated in the understudied context of regional Australia, this Case Study research explores how students at a Catholic high school make sense of climate change and their agency to respond. Thematic analysis of focus group discussions, involving 37 participants, revealed that place-based and relational factors were key influences that strengthened or diminished students’ developing sense of climate agency. Educational and social experiences shaped how they viewed their agentic potential, and the kinds of climate action they perceived as meaningful. Importantly, participants valued opportunities for dialogue, and for socially connected activities pursuing tangible environmental benefits. These insights contribute a contextualised, youth perspective on climate agency, highlighting a need to support young people in developing a repertoire of action that reflects their values and social realities. Implications for climate change education policy and practice are discussed.
In this paper we argue that performance and the arts invite a deliberate sensorial connection with the body and can support a bodily turn or return, in order to help artists, scholars and communities more broadly, better attune to increasing climate instability, through collaborative, supportive and reflexive storytelling. Drawing on the three “weather” symposia, the paper focusses on the second symposium which featured a keynote presentation by Rachael Swain, co-artistic director of Marrugeku, Australia’s leading Indigenous Intercultural Dance and Performance Company. Responses to Marrugeku’s work Cut the Sky are collectively presented to illuminate what Swain argues are, “Dramaturgies of consequence” (2020), that emerge from working and thinking with the choreopolitical platform of Marrugeku’s practice, and how this is felt in the bodies and the actions of audiences. Such a focus on thinking and feeling with and through our bodies, is crucial in preparing to respond and adapt to the myriad evolving political, environmental and social crises we are enmeshed in. By focusing on Cut The Sky we argue that contemporary performance, which foregrounds the body, is an exemplary practice which can ignite visceral and kinaesthetic responses in spectators for activating change through Marrugeku’s choreography of resistance.
This study examines the intersection of climate change awareness and legal literacy consciousness among staff and students in Ghanaian senior high schools (SHS) situated in environmentally vulnerable areas. Focusing on district schools within the Central and Western regions of Ghana, where illegal mining and pollution have severely degraded ecosystems, the research explores how legal knowledge influences environmental advocacy justice. Using a qualitative paradigm, the study employs a multiple-case study design involving 30 participants, including students and staff from selected SHS in these regions. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions, with thematic analysis applied to identify recurring patterns and themes. The findings reveal that while participants demonstrate a growing awareness of the impacts of climate change, their legal literacy regarding environmental rights and regulations remains limited. This gap hinders their ability to advocate for environmental justice and hold stakeholders accountable. The study underscores the need for integrating legal literacy into environmental education curricula to empower communities to combat climate change and environmental degradation. By amplifying the untold stories of these communities, this research contributes to the discourse on climate justice and the role of education in fostering sustainable environmental practices in resource-rich but vulnerable districts of Ghana.
Education for sustainable development requires an understanding of complex Earth system processes with an ethical reflection on global justice. In this context, concepts such as planetary boundaries and the Doughnut model serve as reference frameworks. Their didactic connection to the concept of planetary justice has thus far only been partially addressed. This paper presents the theory-based, design-oriented development of a digitally supported learning module for geography in upper secondary education. The module is based on five conceptually integrated design principles: normative openness; planetary boundaries and Doughnut model as framework; systems thinking; integration of the three justice dimensions (interspecies, intergenerational, and intragenerational); and a problem-based, real-world learning environment. It was implemented using ArcGIS StoryMaps, which visualise narratives based on a case study to illustrate socio-ecological interrelations across local, regional and global scales. The paper contributes by facilitating a conceptually grounded integration of planetary justice into geography education.
This study examines the role of families in preserving cultural identity and moral values amid globalisation, employing a mixed-methods approach, the research highlights how cultural identity and moral values can instil environmental responsibility and help generations to embrace the principle of sustainability. A survey with 208 respondents and 13 in-depth interviews were conducted in the community of the UAE Higher Education, in the United Arab Emirates. The key findings reveal that families remain the cornerstone of preserving values and cultural identity by promoting environmental responsibility. However, globalisation, particularly through social media and globalised education, threatens familial cohesion. Furthermore, the study highlights the duality of globalisation as both a disruptor and a potential enabler of hybrid cultural frameworks, calling for policy interventions to regulate digital content and promote sustainability, environmental responsibility and cultural awareness, while emphasising collaborative efforts across families, educators and policymakers. Through bridging the empirical gaps, this research offers actionable insights for sustaining cultural resilience in an interconnected world.
Despite increased awareness and policy support, numerous rural individuals in India continue to struggle with the adoption of ecologically sustainable practices. This study examines the impact of village leaders' emotional intelligence (EI) on promoting community-focused environmental education and enhancing action competence for sustainable rural development. A comparative case study including twelve villages - six high-performing and six underperforming - was conducted using leader self-assessments, community questionnaires, and field observations. The findings indicate that villages led by individuals with elevatedEI excel in water conservation, waste management, community engagement, and the development of sustainable infrastructure. These leaders exhibit heightened motivation, empathy, and social acumen, facilitating collaboration and participatory governance. The research highlights the importance of emotionally intelligent leadership in linking environmental consciousness with sustainable community practices.
The growing emphasis on socially responsible science education has intensified calls to integrate socioscientific issues (SSIs) into classroom practice. However, in many Global South contexts, environmental issues remain depoliticised and disconnected from students’ lived realities. This study examines how middle-school science teachers from agrarian communities in Panipat, Haryana (India) engage with the SSI of stubble burning while navigating their dual roles as educators and community stakeholders. Using a reflexive qualitative case study design, the study draws on semi-structured interviews with eight teachers, supported by classroom observations and contextual fieldnotes. Findings reveal a persistent disjunction between curricular representations and lived experience. While textbooks frame stubble burning in abstract and moralised terms, teachers interpret it as a complex issue shaped by economic constraints, policy pressures, and community practices. Classroom engagement remains constrained by time, curriculum demands, and socio-cultural sensitivities, resulting in intermittent but meaningful efforts to connect scientific concepts with local realities. Teachers’ identities as members of agrarian communities both enable empathetic, context-sensitive interpretations and constrain explicit critical engagement. The study argues for science education that is place-based, politically informed, and responsive to lived realities, offering empirical insights for reimagining SSI pedagogy in agrarian Global South contexts.
This study examines how Moroccan households mobilize intergenerational solidarity during recurring economic shocks (COVID-19 and inflation) and argues that family life constitutes a key site of informal Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE), where everyday routines cultivate learning about resource management, care and collective problem-solving. Addressing a gap in ESE/ESD research on crisis-time family learning, we analyse how informal support both enables and constrains sustainability-oriented action competence beyond schooling. The study adopts a qualitative design combining 65 semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observations and household document analysis across 28 urban and rural families (F & egrave;s-Mekn & egrave;s region). Data were analysed through a grounded theory approach and interpreted using an integrated lens of family resilience, capability theory, gender analysis and action competence (critical understanding, participatory/practical skills and individual/collective efficacy). Findings reveal three dominant solidarity configurations: (1) extended parental support to adult children, (2) reciprocal cohabitation shaped by gendered expectations and (3) remittance transfers from young migrants to older relatives. These mechanisms function as informal pedagogies of sustainability (repair-reuse routines, budgeting trade-offs, neighbourhood mutual-aid governance) that strengthen household resilience, yet also generate emotional fatigue, uneven caregiving burdens and gendered inequalities. We show how solidarity operates as both social protection and a pathway for uneven capability conversion, along gender lines. The paper concludes with implications for ESE/ESD actors and policy makers to support family-based learning ecologies while advancing care justice and equitable role redistribution. We propose "intergenerational solidarity resilience" as a concept for analysing how informal solidarities generate - and unevenly distribute - capabilities for sustainability-oriented action.
Teaching academics operate in a turbulent context of natureculture challenges, as well as neoliberal institutional constraints. Therefore, understanding the experiences and observations of those teaching sustainability deserves ongoing attention. In an exploratory study, we conducted in-depth interviews at one Australian university with six academics who incorporate sustainability concepts into their teaching. In a move away from Cartesian separability we brought a relational and connected process philosophy to a qualitative interview methodology, enlivening interviews as performative "intra-views." Applying a posthumanist sensibility to qualitative method opened the possibility of richer accounts of teaching experience. What emerged from the interviews was a sense of academics' optimism, commitment and enthusiasm for teaching, along with their success strategies such as transdisciplinary pedagogies and cross-sectorial partnerships. This research points to the importance of ongoing attention to the lived experience of academics teaching sustainability, and to the value of bringing theory to meet data in sustainability education research.
As ecological crises intensify and planetary boundaries are exceeded, early childhood environmental education requires reimagining. Dominant stewardship and child-centred approaches often position children as autonomous actors engaging with a passive environment, reproducing human-nature divisions and obscuring more-than-human agencies. This paper introduces dust pedagogies, a posthuman approach that foregrounds dust and other microworlds as sites of ecological inquiry and relational learning. Drawing on posthuman theory, environmental humanities and Barad's (2007) concept of intra-action, the study examines children's encounters with dust through microscopy, multisensory exploration and co-mapping in a kindergarten in Melbourne, Australia. Commonly dismissed as waste, dust is reconfigured as agentic matter entangled with infrastructures, histories and planetary processes. The analysis demonstrates how these encounters connect local, embodied experiences with broader ecological systems, fostering curiosity, care and ethical attentiveness. Dust pedagogies offer a generative pathway for linking early childhood education with environmental justice and planetary boundaries in the Anthropocene.
This study investigates the extent to which language learning tasks in the Super Minds textbook series promote environmental awareness. Using a critical micro-semiotic discourse analysis, it examines 52 tasks from seven sub-units labelled “Environmental Studies” or “Environmental Science” across six textbooks. The analysis reveals that the majority of tasks promote an ecocentric worldview, with fewer instances of anthropocentric, biocentric and mixed perspectives. In terms of levels of environmental literacy, most tasks fall within the functional literacy category, followed by nominal and operational levels. These findings indicate a tendency towards surface-level engagement with environmental issues. The study calls for more diverse and transformative environmental perspectives in language education materials to support deeper learner engagement. At an international level, the findings highlight the potential of global English language curricula to play a more active role in fostering environmental literacy and sustainability-oriented mindsets among learners.
