Scaling understood as the question of how to introduce an educational activity in a new context includes both sharing what we consider successful and how to pick up important elements from the achievements of others. Recently, the confinement of implementation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) to best practice, good examples and piloting has been diversified to include a conceptualisation of scaling of ESD (Coburn 2003; Clarke and Dede 2009; Looi and Teh 2015). However, to date this diversification of ways of approaching implementation of ESD has mainly been taken up in policy circles (UNESCO 2014). Hence, a scholarly critique about scaling, and how it relates to issues of inclusion and exclusion in ESD remains to be developed. This symposium explores the affordances and constraints of taking ESD to scale. It invites participants to reflect upon scaling up, out, and deep, as an expansive learning process in which recontextualization of so-called “scaling objects” is key. The purpose of the symposium is to offer a number of critical scholarly perspectives from different geographical areas about scaling of ESD. This includes presenting empirical research results as well as different theoretical and methodological approaches to how the migration of different scaling objects (methods, models, value sets, etc.) may be executed and conceptualized in the policy and practice nexus. The symposium invites the participants to engage in critical discussions about scaling and approaches to enhance our understanding of implementation processes with regards to global policies in diverse contexts and on different levels in formal and informal ESD settings.

The symposium showcases multiple theoretical approaches to scaling of ESD including learning theories inspired by pragmatist philosophy (Dewey 1938; Dewey and Bentley 1949) and post-Vygotskijan theories (Engestrom 1987; 2016) as well as social justice theories (Sen 1989; Alkire 2002; Nussbaum 2003; Kronlid 2014). Methodologically, different approaches to studying scaling of ESD are presented, such as case studies, retrospective assessments, participatory research, philosophical analyses, and interdisciplinary ethics analysis.

The symposium engages in a shared discussion about what, who, where, when, and why ESD activities are introduced in diverse contexts and levels, i.e. in scaling. Questions that will be discussed include:

• How can the scaling of ESD activities be approached to take account of the valued beings and doings of people and places?
• What is characteristic of a scaling concept that of ESD activities escape the aid-trap of critical reliance on external support when such support and engagement shift its focus?
• How can ESE research take on theoretical understandings and concepts that are adapted to the activities of scaling ESD rather than relying on imported concepts and explanations from other subjects and research areas, such as economic theory, organisational theory, innovation theory?
• What are the implications for ESE-research if we understand scaling-as-learning?
• How can ESD policy and activities be transformed as a result of scaling processes?
• How can empirical and theorizing analyses enrich one another and the implementation of a research-based scaling of ESD?

The symposium brings theoretical and methodological perspectives of scaling into conversation with empirical studies of ESD-activities and how this may enrich the UNESCO Global Action Programme (GAP) (UNESCO 2014), especially in light of its emerging concept of ’scaling-up’ and how global ESD policy is and can be put into practice across the diverse contextual conditions of our planet.

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