This narrative review is the first to focus on how young people themselves express their experiences of participation in ecological restoration projects, as a guide to creating projects that engage them effectively. It gathers 10 qualitative and mixed-method studies that document young people's experiences through observations, interviews, focus…

Knowledge about sustainability problems as it is typically taught does not "per se" lead to action for tackling these problems. Environmental and sustainability education researchers have argued for teaching more action-oriented knowledge. This article addresses the 'didactical work' required for teachers to do so, both in preparing and…

Creativity is key in developing students' environmental competence so that they come up with working and sustainable solutions to address environmental issues in daily life. However, these remain under-investigated in both Environmental Education (EE) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) research. Here, we report an action research…

In the face of the global sustainability crisis, schools and teachers are called on to transform education and implement educational innovations to strengthen sustainability education. One of these innovations is 'open schooling': educational practices that involve students in identifying, exploring, and tackling real-world sustainability problems…

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…

Citizen science is a valuable tool in environmental and formal education in creating scientific knowledge for the researchers and facilitating learning and fostering a positive relationship toward the environment and study species. We present a case study on the Helsinki Urban Rat Project in which students surveyed rat occurrence in their own near…

This article advocates a holistic approach to education concerning literacy and ecological literacy development and builds on data from two different case studies in compulsory school classes in Sweden. The study is built on action-based research and the data material was analysed through directed qualitative content analysis. We argue that place…