The emerging area of environmental and sustainability education (ESE) emphasizes aspects of learning that enhance the transition towards sustainability, ‘translates’ research outcomes of sustainability science into educational practices and is an integrative approach to teaching and learning. Thus, it represents a changed educational paradigm, rather than yet another ‘adjectival’ education. Over the last decade significant development has led to ESE not only as an area of practice but also of research and development with a growing number of publications, conferences and network structures. ESE related research today is an established part of educational research and more and more early career researchers engage in this research area.

With the maturation of every area of research and educational practice at a certain point the question arises what actually constitutes this area. What is typical for research in the area, what specific approaches or common themes may we find? The moment at which such questions are considered explicitly is an important stepping point in the development of every discipline or research area and consequently also features prominently in the furthering of ESE research. These questions are especially important for early career researchers that engage with ESE research and find themselves often in situations where they have to balance necessary disciplinary (educational science) expertise with the interdisciplinary nature of their research.

Support structures, such as summer schools for early career researchers, can help to get an overview of key developments in the area of ESE research, to learn about new developments and to gain systematic insights in empirical research approaches and methods. During this round table we will systematically elaborate how a summer school in 2018 could best support ESE researchers and strengthen the further development of our field and the ESE network.

In the first presentation Per Sund and Stefan Bengtsson will introduce the activities of the Graduate school in Education and Sustainable Development (GRESD) as an exemplary approach to support early career researchers. The presentation will raise the question of how ECRs can benefit the most from support structures to build their career path.

Elsa Lee will discuss to the experiences of the first summer school of the ESER network that took place in 2016. Insights from the planning and realizing of that first summer school will provide valuable support for future activities.

Matthias Barth will present a draft proposal for a follow-up summer school in 2018. Details on the aim and objectives of the summer school will be given and the potential funding schemes and its necessities will be detailed.

In a general discussion, moderated by Per Sund, the draft proposal will be discussed and further developed. The aim is to detail the program and agree upon an application procedure that allows an international and diverse group of European ECRs to participate in this event. As an outcome a working group will be built to prepare the proposal for an ESE summer school in 2018, funded by the German Academic Exchange Agency.

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