Conference Agenda

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is influenced by conditions widely described as a poly-crisis, characterized by the interconnections between climate change, democratic backsliding, geopolitical conflict, and social inequality (Stein et al., 2025). These conditions increasingly challenge the further development of ESD, as educational and sustainability initiatives encounter growing media-driven and political resistance, as well as societal polarization (Cakanlar, 2024). Nevertheless, ESD is increasingly present in educational systems worldwide, and multi-actor networks work on the further implementation of this “social innovation” (Bormann, Nikel 2017).

Reflexive Monitoring in Action (RMA) was developed within sustainability research to support system innovation by embedding reflexivity into ongoing innovation processes like the further implementation of ESD (van Mierlo et al., 2010). It uses methods such as the dynamic learning agenda, which supports project teams in systematically linking ideas, relationships, and courses of action to foster system-level reflection across learning and action dimensions, and has been applied in different fields of sustainability research, among others in the setting up of monitoring systems for learning effectiveness in agroecological farm innovation (Rijswijk et al., 2015; Liberloo et al. 2021). RMA conceptualizes reflexivity not merely as a cognitive activity, but as an emergent property of collective learning processes within innovation networks. This perspective highlights the need for protected communicative spaces that allow actors to question dominant routines, negotiate uncertainty, and experiment with alternative practices (van Mierlo et al., 2010).

While RMA is often discussed primarily as a methodological approach to foster and analyze system innovation for sustainability (Klaassen et al., 2021; van Mierlo et al., 2010) this paper explores the potential of RMA as an educational approach to the design and shaping of learning environments, in which the micro-politics for ESD-policy making can emerge and be negotiated (Sol et al. 2018). RMA has been applied for ESD policy making several times and linked to overall results in ESD policy research (Singer-Brodowski et al. in prep). Much of the policy research in ESD focuses primarily on the analysis of policy documents and national or international policy discourses, while empirical engagement with the concrete and practical processes of policy development and enactment remains limited (Aikens, McKenzie & Vaughter, 2016). Nevertheless, in the process of pushing forward concrete policy initiatives in educational systems policy makers as well as other actors from multi-actor networks are feeling individuals and influenced by emotions, which are explored seldomly. Pitton and McKenzie (2022) emphasized this emotional dimension in policy making for Climate Change Education with their study: “What moves us also moves policies makers”. We thereby assume that the overall trends of backlashes in sustainability also influence actors involved in RMA-processes who want to push forward sustainability transformations. We therefore ask for educational environments where policy makers have the conditions to deal with challenging emotional dynamics.

Against this background, the paper addresses the following research questions:

• How do professional and institutional contexts across different educational fields as well as backlashes in sustainability policies shape the implementation and working processes of RMA in ESD?
• Which framework conditions (context) and which communicative conditions influence RMA, particularly with regard to actor reflexivity and emotions in learning and innovation contexts?

Since its establishment in 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has played a defining role in bringing climate change onto the global agenda and integrating scientific knowledge into policymaking. The 1992 Rio Earth Summit, organized under UN leadership, marked a turning point for international cooperation on sustainability and global environmental protection (Maslin, Lang & Harvey, 2023). Its most important outcome was the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which established the institutional foundation for international climate cooperation and initiated the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) process (World Bank, 2020). Scientific recommendations and COP consensus have centered on greenhouse gas emission reductions and carbon pricing (Tucker, 2025). While reducing carbon emissions is regarded as one of the most effective mitigation methods, success has largely depended on developed countries' policies and commitment levels. However, the United States has caused significant disruptions in global climate policy through both the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement processes (Sachs, 2019).

Although the US demonstrated intellectual leadership in supporting climate research for many years, it showed resistance to emission targets and binding commitments (Depledge, 2005). Early climate initiatives (Noordwijk Declaration, 1989; Bergen Ministerial Declaration, 1990) emphasized that developed countries should lead in reducing emissions while supporting developing countries with technology transfer and adaptation capacity. Within this framework, leadership emerged as a political concept in climate mitigation (Gupta, 2010).

The US has been positioned as a natural climate leader due to being one of the world's largest carbon emitters (EDGAR, 2025) and possessing significant economic and technological capacity. As Barack Obama noted, the US carries a "vital role" and "unique responsibility" globally due to its "exceptional" economic and technological position combined with high carbon emissions (Jones & Fowler, 2022). However, US climate policy fluctuations have evolved into a process fueling climate skepticism and denialism. Donald Trump's skeptical and denialist rhetoric has been particularly defining. The Trump administration voluntarily withdrew from traditional global leadership under the "America First" doctrine, retreating from climate mitigation efforts (Kristensen, 2017).

These developments created a leadership crisis in global climate policies, profoundly affecting policymaking, societal perceptions, and public discourse. US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement undermined the Agreement's universality, damaged states' confidence in climate cooperation, worsened the leadership gap in addressing global climate issues, and set a damaging precedent for international cooperation (Zhang et al., 2017). Research demonstrates that climate-skeptic political leaders coming to power can significantly influence public beliefs and attitudes toward climate change (McGuire, 2017). This global leadership crisis emerging from climate skepticism and narrow national interests has created challenges for environmental education policies and educators (Fiorino, 2018). Increasing skepticism and cynicism in climate debates undermine trust in science, making it more difficult to raise awareness of climate change (Gounaridis & Newell, 2024). This represents a significant barrier limiting climate education's societal impact. However, existing literature on climate change predominantly treats education as disconnected from political context and reduced to technical knowledge transmission.

This study examines through a systematic review how the climate leadership crisis in global climate policies is addressed in education literature, evaluating education's role, potential, and limitations in facing this multidimensional crisis.

Climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution are increasingly understood as mutually reinforcing crises that are pushing socio-ecological systems toward potentially abrupt and irreversible change (Armstrong McKay et al., 2022; UNEP 2021). Across major science–policy assessments, a consistent implication is that incremental adjustments are insufficient: avoiding the worst outcomes depends on wide societal transformations—changes in infrastructures and technologies, but also in institutions, norms, values, and power relations that shape production and consumption (IPBES, 2019; IPCC, 2022).

In this context, the language of transformative change has become prominent. IPBES defines transformative change as a “fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values” (IPBES, 2019). IPCC assessments similarly stress that effective mitigation and adaptation depend not only on policy design and technological options, but also on enabling conditions such as governance capacity, equity-oriented approaches, and social learning—within which education and climate literacy are repeatedly invoked as essential (IPCC, 2022).

Responding to these calls, environmental and sustainability education research has developed a substantial body of theoretical and methodological approaches explicitly oriented toward societal transformation. Rather than treating learners as targets of information transfer or behaviour change alone, this scholarship foregrounds political agency, civic action, critical deliberation, and emancipation. A concern in the educational sciences has grown with respect to how best to support students in developing not only knowledgeability but also hope and agency to address complex socioscientific challenges (Ojala, 2012; Røkenes et al., 2025; UNESCO, 2024). We thus find educational research emphasizing action competence (Jensen & Schnack, 1997), distinctions between more instrumental and more critical/pluralistic approaches to ESD and work on transformative/transgressive social learning that emphasises disruption of unsustainable norms and the capacity to imagine and enact alternative futures (Vare & Scott, 2007). According to these approaches education is not merely a “factor” correlated with emissions or adaptive capacity but can also be a site where collective agency and democratic capability for transformation are cultivated (Wals & Benavot, 2017).

Yet, it remains unclear whether—and how—major policy-informing assessments that explicitly recognise the importance of education are also aware of, and able to draw upon, this transformative and emancipatory knowledge base. To address this gap, this study examines the extent and discursive ways by which education and educational research are considered and mobilised in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), focusing on the Working Group III contribution on mitigation (IPCC, 2022). We analyse how “education” is constructed (i.e., what it is taken to be), what roles it is assigned in relation to social change, and how these constructions align—or fail to align—with key strands of transformative sustainability education research.

Research questions:

1. What images of ‘education’ can be identified in the AR6 report?
2. What roles do education take in societal change to mitigate and adapt to climate change?
3. How do these images of education compare to educational discourse on climate change and processes of change?

To answer our research questions, the AR6 report was analysed iteratively through abduction methods with several iterations consisting of individual coding, meetings to discuss and adjust the coding structure, leading to refined analysis.

The findings indicate that AR6 is dominated by an instrumental view of education. There are occurrences of education viewed as important for human development and more inquiry-based and participatory approaches to learning. It is however difficult to avoid the conclusion that the IPCC, based on our analysis, seems to underplay the significant role education may take in mitigating and adapting to climate change.