Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been launched as an answer to build a more sustainable world. In the past it has been suggested that education through improved knowledge levels and/or changed values would change people’s behavior in a more environmental friendly way. These suggestions have been criticized since sustainable problems often are ‘wicked’, i.e. problems that are difficult to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements based on what perspectives you prioritize. Instead transformative perspectives on ESD has been propagated the last decade suggesting that education should foster ‘critical thinkers’ and ‘action competence’ so that the future generation can decided upon, and take action in an insightful way, to these wicked problems (Wals 2010). However, empirical studies are a missing link in the discourse around transformative ESD approaches, where decisions and implementation strategies are heavily based on policy recommendations and gut feelings by practitioners. We used data from 2413 students in grades 6, 9, and 12 from 51 schools across Sweden to study the effectiveness of ESD. In line with the current debate on the definition of ESD, we quantified the extent to which teaching can be labeled as holistic and/or pluralistic (Rudsberg & Öhman 2010). Through a series of descriptive analyses and the estimation of structural equation models, our results indicate that ESD can indeed have an impact on student outcomes in terms of their sustainability consciousness. The results of this study reveal the key role ESD plays in addressing SD, paving the way for a more sustainable future.

Rudsberg, K. & Öhman, J. (2010). Pluralism in practice: Experiences from Swedish evaluation, school development and research. Environmental Education Research. 2010, 16, 95–111. Wals, A.E.J. (2010). Between knowing what is right and knowing that is it wrong to tell others what is right: On relativism, uncertainty and democracy in environmental and sustainability education. Environmental Education Research. 16, 143–151.