Over the last several decades, sustainability has inspired new curricula and novel pedagogical approaches in the attempt to achieve the non-traditional learning outcomes which Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) requires. These curriculum and pedagogies have already begun to be adopted widely at all different grade levels, however, to date there is as yet little empirical evidence about how these approaches might contribute to ESD learning outcomes. Therefore it is critical that the filed development robust and valid methods for assessing the learning of students in ESD. Numerous current efforts are being made to effectively assess the attainment of ESD learning outcomes by students at all levels. This includes a diverse array of approaches, from interviews and observations (Redman, 2013) to a written assignment evaluating case studies (Remington-Doucette, et al., 2014) and many others in between. Nor is ESD the first field in education to explore alternative methods to assessing learning outcomes. Drawing from the diverse array of published work within ESD as well as some of the key outcomes from similar studies in other fields of education research this paper provides a comprehensive overview of what has been done so far and proposes a typology of assessment approaches for ESD. This typology builds on the significant progress already made in developing frame works by Barth (2009) and others while incorporating a review of the literature on current practices to create robust and practical typology. The strengths and weaknesses of current approaches as well as future directions for the field will be discussed.

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