Society is facing huge environmental problems, and young people active in initiatives like Fridays for Future are considering politicians to bring about more climate protection. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in formal education is in these times highly relevant, but at the same time, teachers lack knowledge and/or experience about how to enable critical thinking about controversial topics (Mitchell 2018). Cooperation with extracurricular educators or activists seem to be promising (Bludau 2016) or even vital, following Steiner and Rauch (2010). In such cooperation, stakeholder with different background and expertise come together in multi-professional networks, using respectively creating spaces of innovative sustainable practices.

The present doctoral thesis looks at the potential of such networks in terms of the (geography-) teacher’s professionalization and the design of ESD, which is considered as a practice of social innovation (Bormann 2013). The doctoral thesis thus lies in the more recent debate about social innovations in the educational sciences (e.g. Bormann 2013), as well as the professionalization in the field of ESD, which lacks in empirical evidence (Bertschy et al. 2013, Biddulph et al. 2015, Reinke 2017, Manasia et al. 2020). It also builds a bridge to other disciplines, such as social geography with its constructivist perspective on social space (Kessl and Reutlinger 2010). The thesis is moreover part of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary sustainability research in the context of the ‘great transformation' (WBGU 2011).

The doctoral thesis ties in with a research project that was designed with practice partners on the topic of “Transformative Education through Engagement (TrafoBNE)” and is funded by the German Federal environmental agency from 2019 until 2021. Within the project TrafoBNE, four so-called ‘learning workshops’ (German: ‘Lernwerkstatt’) were initiated in four classes (6^th-11^th) and at three different German cities during the school year 2019/20 (and in two schools proceeding in 2020/21). The workshops took place in the service-learning mode (Sliwka 2013) and are taking the theory of transformative learning (e.g. Mezirow 2003) into account.

For each workshop, cooperation was launched between schoolteachers and pupils with actors from extracurricular fields of practice, which combines diverse experiences (Reinke 2017). These practice partners include on the one hand the group of the 'non-formal educational organization’ with experience in educational work and on the other hand the group of 'social innovation actors' who are involved in less institutionalized projects in the context of social-ecological transformation, like community or urban garden projects, repair cafés or social entrepreneurship. Hence, within the doctoral thesis the actor constellations in these workshops are considered as four separate multi-professional networks. The networks are, furthermore regarded as innovative, since social innovation actors from spaces of sustainable practices are involved and make it possible for the pupils to experience these learning environments evolving from these spaces at the extracurricular activities of the workshops.

The aim of the research project is to analyze...

• ... the (profession-) specific teaching ideas of the network partners when implementing an innovative ESD-practice,
• ... the characteristics of professionalization of (geography-)teachers in the context of ESD,
• ... the effects of the learning workshop-specific requirements on the professional self-image,
• ... the pedagogical action of the network partner within the learning workshop and its effects from the perspective of the participants.

This leads to the following leading research questions:

To what extent do professionalization processes take place among (geography) teachers through service learning-based collaborative experiences in spaces of innovative sustainability practice?

As contribution to the conference, the meaning of spaces of innovative sustainable practices and their actors on the educational processes in the context of sustainability will be presented on basis of first empirical data.

The doctoral thesis analyzes the potential of the multi-professional networks with regard to the learning and acquisition of ESD-relevant professional skills on the part of the (geography-) teacher, carried out as qualitative social research-study. The data basis for the study are guided, partially structured interviews, as well as participatory observations. According to Flick, interviews and observations in qualitative social research complement each other very well (Flick 2011). In addition, participatory observation will help to understand negotiation and implementation processes concerning the innovative educational formats. Moreover, a focus group with teachers will help to understand their deeper ideas, expectations and experiences with actors from spaces of innovative sustainable practices. On basis of the collected data, the methods will be finally triangulated. The concept of triangulation comes from land surveying and, in the context of qualitative research, means to to shed light on different perspectives on the research objects (Schründer-Lenzen 2010, pp. 149–150). The use of several methods or perspectives aims to obtain results that are more precise (ibid.). It is no longer just a matter of validating results as Denzin (1978) understood the term in the 1970s, but rather of expanding the “possibilities of knowledge” (Flick 2010, p. 284). Guided interviews are mostly used in the context of experts (Kruse et al. 2015: 166). The present study will use the term ‘expert’ in relation to the actors and their respective professional orientation and understanding of professionalism, as well as the experience gained from the learning workshops (Kruse 2015). In total, examination includes four different multi-professional (innovation) networks, with 6 teachers and 10 extracurricular educators involved. All actors were interviewed during the first lock-down due to political decisions in reaction to the Corona pandemic in the school year 2019/2020. The second inquiry in form of the focus group will take place at the end of the school year 2020/2021. Investigation of at least two extracurricular activities of each cooperation took place through participatory observation. The observations have been protocolled and included in the qualitative content analysis (e.g. Kuckartz 2018). Analysis of the interviews included primarily transcription and evaluation in MaxQDA. To conclude, the empirical case study focuses on the individual level, even though considerations on the contrast between school form and region are taken into account. The planned contribution will present and discuss first results from the interviews and observations conducted in 2020 by taking effects of corona into account.

Stoltenberg considers ESD as “a challenge to Change of perspective” (Stoltenberg 2010: 42). Thus, a process on the teacher’s side from teaching to learning and questioning the own role/perspective, but also educational institution through exchange with others has to take place due to Stoltenberg’s understanding of professionalization in the ESD-context. Against this background, the results shall be discussed in addition but also in distinction to existing competence models for ESD like the CSCT-model (Sleurs 2008), the UNECE‐model (UNECE 2012), the KOM-BiNE-model (Rauch/Steiner 2013) or the approach of Bertschy et al. (2013). The UNECE-model goes beyond the view of a teacher as educator and offers competencies to question the personal behavior and identity. This model aims at all educators, thus it is a good basis to discuss the results of the present doctoral research project as in cooperation a rather informal learning takes place. The study might carve out relevant teaching skills for making use of extracurricular cooperation and shows in how far networks including formally uncertified actors in terms of pedagogic education can be promising and/or supporting. Especially in the field of social innovations, high motivation for sharing experience and knowledge about alternative ways of economic thinking and acting could give hope and make learners but also teachers active instead of demoralizing or overwhelming them. Furthermore, as three of the four ‘learning workshops’ are part of the geography-class, results are embedded in ongoing research in geography didactics and questions of social geography. All in all, the results of the study will bring further insights from the challenging field of teaching the next generation about the ‘wicked problems’ (Roberts 2010) society is facing and aligns itself to the recent debate on transformative education (WBGU 2011) (Singer-Brodowski 2016) (Laros et al. 2017).

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