Policy efforts to increase the institutionalization of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) within national educational systems are often organized within multi-actor networks, consisting of administrative actors, representatives of civil society or educational practitioners (e.g. van Poeck et al. 2014, Nomura/ Abe 2009). They usually use “soft  governance instruments” like fostering networks and dialogue or developing joint strategies (Læssøe & Mochizuki, 2015, Feinstein  et al. 2013). Because these policy processes are so presuppositional, the involved actors need a high level of expertise regarding the different educational structures within one educational area (e.g. early childhood education, school education). Structures in this context represent rules and resources that can enable or constrain individual action (Giddens 1984). Following the theory of structuration, the dichotomy of agency and structure is criticized and the relationship between them is described as reciprocal and interdependent (ibid.). Translated to the policy processes of ESD this means that individual actors can influence the structures of ESD policies, especially when they are organized within multi-actor networks. At the same time, the structures influence individual actors, although it is not always clear how this is recognized rationally and consciously (Pitton/ McKenzie 2022). To better understand how the process of structuration evolves to scale or mainstream ESD within different educationals system (Mickelsson et al. 2019), it is interesting to look at the micro-politics of actors within one specific multi-actor process in order to analyze how they refer to, construe or deconstrue structures within their educational system (Singer-Brodowski et al. 2020).

One of the basic assumptions within the discourse on policy innovations for sustainability is that reflection processes and reflexivity are needed to deal with complexity and ambivalences (e.g. Feindt/Weiland 2018). Reflection makes it possible to make one's own sectoral and organizational routines explicit and to make the associated routines of action the subject of joint exchange processes. Reflexivity is either described as the ability to cultivate reflections continuously (Singer-Brodowski et al. 2020) or as the systematic repercussions of developments and dynamics in the respective political field on the political initiatives and actors who want to shape this field (Feindt/Weiland 2018). While the first definition highlights the agency-dimension of individual actors, the second definition is more in line with the structures of a respective system and how it influences the actors.

Bringing these theoretical strands together, the main research question of this paper is how policy efforts for ESD within multi-actor networks can influence national education systems and how these processes of structuration are entangled with reflection and reflexivity.

The study is situated within a national multi-actor process for ESD in Germany with different working committees, where actors of various organizations are included to discuss measures for implementing ESD within the different educational areas. In 2017 they developed a National Action Plan on ESD for six educational areas with altogether 350 measures for strengthening ESD. In order to support and advise the policy process a National Monitoring is conducted at the Office of the Scientific Advisor. This monitoring includes different studies like large document analysis, quantitative survey as well as qualitative studies. For the study that is the focus of the paper, the Reflexive Monitoring in Action approach was used as the methodological framework because it was explicitly developed for projects that aim to contribute to sustainable development through system innovations (van Mierlo et al. 2010). The use of the RMA aimed to both support a reflexive system for institutionalizing ESD and to understand how the actors negotiate the process of strengthening ESD. For this reason, we aimed at supporting actors through stimulating reflection on the one side and to better understand their micro-politics in working for an institutionalization of ESD on the other side. 13 interactive workshops were held in four ESD forums of different educational areas over a period of nine months. Due to the Corona pandemic, the workshops were organized as digital sessions and were all video recorded. The data gathered have been analyzed using videography (Tuma et al. 2013) and Qualitative Content Analyses (Kuckartz 2018). The core categories that were developed from the inductive and deductive coding procedures of the transcribed material were: systemic knowledge of the education field, strategies and practices of actors, structural interaction, reflection, and agency. The material of workshops in the different educational areas have been continuously compared to each other and discussed within 27 analysis meetings between the researchers involved.

A first core result of the analysis was that the actors' handling of their own knowledge and non-knowledge played an important role in their ability to act: the highly complex change processes for implementing ESD challenged the committee members to create a common knowledge base from the fragmented expertise of the individuals as to how exactly this change should be brought about. Another core result stemming from the analysis was that trust and the ability to work in relations between the different sectors involved was pivotal to share their expertise and develop common expertise-based measures for further institutionalizing ESD. Regarding practices and strategies of cooperation, on the one hand, forum-related practices were found (such as the deliberate integration of new members or reflections on improving the work and impact of the forums). On the other hand, outward-looking strategies for mainstreaming ESD were identified (such as explicating a lobbying strategy). Both were closely related and also expressed in the structural patterns of interaction of the participants with each other. For example, if forum members succeeded in entangling their interests well in the forum and also in dealing with conflicts, they simultaneously demonstrated a productive culture of handling interests of those organizations that are important for ESD mainstreaming but were not yet represented in the ESD bodies. Reflections in this context helped to make tacit knowledge explicit and to translate the respective working cultures for the other actors. From the results of the analysis, questions were derived as reflection impulses for the further development of the committee work.

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