This paper makes four claims: First, it argues that the concept of personal sustainability competencies is appropriate to describe envisaged intrapersonal learning outcomes of Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) practice. Applying the competency definition of Weinert (2001) and the features of key sustainability competencies (Brundiers et al., 2020), I will show that inner skills and abilities match all criteria to be described as competencies. Second, the paper argues that intrapersonal competencies can be specified on the basis of inner, affective-motivational challenges individuals face when engaging in the cause of sustainability. Exemplarily looking at challenges individuals intend to change their consumer behavior and engage in SC-related learning, the article derives a set of personal competencies that directly respond to these such challenges. These include value clarity, self-awareness, emotional resilience, self-care, access to and cultivation of ethical qualities, and mindsets for sustainability. Third, the paper claims that such competencies should - at least to a certain degree - be assessed as learning outcomes of ESE practice. (Some of) these competencies directly determine an individual's qualification to fulfill professional roles related to sustainability. Their acquisition should hence be assessed as rigorously as other sustainability competencies are. Fourth, the article holds that it is possible to qualitatively assess intrapersonal competencies. An essential difficulty of assessing intrapersonal competencies is that their application is not directly observable from the outside. Intrapersonal competency assessment must hence rely on self-reports. However, research suggests that it is possible to introduce a certain degree of objectivity in these self-reports. Three approaches suggested in this paper are (a) to engage students systematic group analyses of their own self-reports (Frank & Stanszus, 2019), (b) to combine interpretative with discourse analytical methods when looking at self-reports (Frank et al., 2019), and (c) applying micro-phenomenological analysis (Petitmengin et al., 2019) on self-reports. Overall, the paper makes a case for a stronger consideration personal sustainability competencies in ESE practice, and argues that such competencies should and can guide the design and evaluation of corresponding learning programs and activities.

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