Children and young people today are growing up in an increasingly urban, technical, virtual and ecologically precarious world, leaving many feel disconnected from nature yet anxious about its degradation at the same time. Two distinct bodies of knowledge -- namely youth human-nature relationships and youth eco-anxiety -- are concerned with the…

In educational settings, educators' individual perceptions of theories and concepts (e.g. about teaching and learning) are crucial for their professional performance. Thus, regarding education for sustainable development (ESD), it is vital to focus on teacher educators' (TEs') perceptions of this concept. As ESD is a comparatively young and…

Can environmental education help to mitigate learners eco/climate anxiety? Anxiety surrounding climate change has drastically risen in youth in recent years. This paper aims to answer the call from Pihkala's (2020) previous review for more concrete information on educational approaches to support learners in processing eco/climate anxiety. As…

Schools are central to climate change education and climate-friendly transformations both as places which actually produce CO[subscript 2] emissions and, above all, as educational institutions. Following a new materialist, transdisciplinary approach, we research here some of the entanglements that constitute schools as whole institutions. As part…

In response to growing recognition for the mental health impacts of climate change, understanding the full range of children's psychological experiences in climate change education (CCE) contexts is critical to developing approaches that support children's constructive engagement and overall well-being. Through surveys and focus groups conducted…

Teacher education is pivotal to advancing pedagogies, practices, and content knowledge that promote sustainability literacy in formal education settings. To explore preservice teachers' (PST) readiness to implement transformative sustainability learning with elementary (i.e. kindergarten to 6th grade) students, we analyzed unit plans created by…

The question what the focus of climate change education should be has been debated by academics and policy makers. However, this debate is informed to only a limited extent by empirical research on the position of teachers. Based on interviews with nineteen experienced secondary geography teachers in the Netherlands, nine orientations were…

The UNESCO-led Global Action Programme (GAP) on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) underscores the need to increase teachers' capacities to promote sustainable actions through ESD, and several capacity-building teaching guides have been developed with that purpose. From the perspectives of the pluralistic and transformative traditions of…

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted daily life globally, including education. Environmental science cautions that we must expect further disruptions as the sustainability crisis deepens. Resilience to these disruptions will be key to humanity's survival in years to come. The pandemic constitutes a litmus test for environmental education's…

This paper presents findings from a research study exploring the effectiveness of three environmental education programs. The first was an interpretive program where visitors learned to safely interact with and 'pet' bees (control group), the second was the same interpretive program with the addition of post-visit action resources (interactive…

Environmental stewardship education, as a locally oriented concept, benefits from being recast to account for the emergent, multidimensional, and interdisciplinary nature of today's most pressing socio-ecological issues. In an effort to infuse environmental stewardship education with global citizenship, instructional materials on community-based…

In this paper, we explore relational processes between and among three key learning ecosystem actors -- youth, educators, and more-than-human beings -- as a unit of analysis for understanding a specific type of environmental identity development: a 21st century naturalist. Our conceptualization of these relational processes aims to knit together…

Many graduate training programs in global change recognize the importance of policy and appreciate the complex, multi-stakeholder nature of policymaking in practice. However, few engage directly with diverse stakeholders, an important goal in transformational education, through traditional curricula. We present the results following analysis of a…

Since sustainability is subjective and context dependent, sustainability education should focus on the development of a personal understanding of sustainability through critical reflection of values and behaviour. Emotions can motivate value clarification -- a prerequisite to transform worldviews and behaviour. The article presents the disruptive…

Effective environmental justice education poses unique challenges to both educators and students. For students, this pursuit is cognitively challenging at best and emotionally paralyzing at worst. It requires deconstruction of culturally produced narratives that uphold privilege, conceal complicity, and promote individual-level response to…