The latest UN IPCC reports have not only repeatedly reminded us of the urgency of climate change, but also called for changes within various sectors (IPCC, 2021, 2022, 2023). The latest IPPC report (2023) points to the importance of enhancing young people's environmental engagement with climate-related issues as: ”The extent to which civil society actors, […], youth, […], and local communities are engaged influences political support for climate change mitigation and eventual policy outcomes (medium confidence)” (IPCC, 2023: 27). 

In research on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), it is generally acknowledged that ESD is not solely about providing students with knowledge about sustainability or promoting sustainable thinking and behavior in a short-term perspective. ESD must also include Bildung perspectives (Vare & Scott, 2007) to refrain from imparting authoritative rules of action, which are, firstly, not reasonable due to sustainability being a complex phenomenon and solutions being manifold (Gifford, 2009), secondly, uncertain due to the unknown future (Straume, 2020) and, thirdly, do not fit well with an education system based on democratic values (Wals, 2010; Mogensen & Schnack, 2010). Internationally, previous studies in upper secondary school ESD focus on students’ knowledge (Baldwin, Pickering & Dale, 2022), attitudes towards sustainability (Uitto, Juuti, Lavonen, Byman & Meisalo, 2011; Mónus, 2022; Makki, Abd-El-Khalick & Boujaoude, 2010), self-efficacy (Baldwin, Pickering & Dale, 2022) or eco-literacy, which is defined as affective environmental insight and the ability to act consistently in adjusting the balance between quality of life and quality of the environment (e.g. Angreani, Saefudin & Solihat, 2022; Kaya & Elster, 2019; Hermawan et al, 2022). A common understanding is that environmental literacy must include affective dispositions (Hollweg et al., 2011; Hungerford & Volk, 1990; Cook & Berrenberg, 1981; Stern, 2000), leading  studies to explore ways to engage students in sustainability issues (Öhman & Sund, 2021) and in reflection on different solutions (Fernandi, Firman & Rusyati, 2017). 

However, the concept of engagement in general and eco-engagement specifically is shrouded in ambiguity, which makes it difficult to integrate as a focus in educational contexts. The concept has French origins and was originally used with a legal meaning aimed at ‘mettre en gage’, that is ’giving something in pledge’ (Kemp, 1974, s. 41). Over time, the meaning of the concept has gradually changed and is now used to refer to the state of being preoccupied with and present in relation to something (Axelson & Flick, 2010). To create a basis for strengthening the work with students' eco-engagement as requested in the IPCC reports, we in this paper develop and validate scales to measure eco-engagement, based on a scoping review (Arksey & O'Malley, 2005) of existing literature on eco-engagement suggesting that the concept of eco-engagement consists of four key dimensions, attitudes, motivation, intentions, and action (Hejl, Qvortrup, Stage, 2025). Furthermore, we use the scales to explore upper secondary school students’ eco-engagement. The research questions are: 

• How can eco-engagement in upper secondary schools be conceptualized and operationalized theoretically?
• What is the level of eco-engagement among Danish young people in upper secondary schools?

We operationalized the dimensions found in the review, attitudes, motivation, intentions, and action (Hejl, Qvortrup, Stage, 2025). Using SurveyXact, we distributed a survey with 103 items to selected 1st year classes on 30 Danish upper secondary schools. We got 794 responses. After data collection, data ws transferred to SPSS and all statistical analyses are conducted in SPSS v.28, SPSS AMOS v.28 and Excel. Data is screened for impermissible values and missing data. We check for respondent misconduct and delete ‘unengaged respondents’. We validate the scales by following the steps for proper validation of educational instruments suggested by Schönrock-Adema et al. (2009) . In line with the recommendations in Schönrock-Adema et al. (2009), we employ a combination of four psychometric criteria: 1. The scree test: The point of inflexion displayed by the scree plot. 2. The eigenvalues criterion. In order not to overestimate the number of factors retained, factors with eigenvalues > 1.5 will be accepted. 3. The variance explained criterion: A component will be retained if it minimally explained an approximate additional 5% of the variance. 4. The interpretability or meaningfulness criteria: The interpretability of the factors will be investigated using Hatcher’s interpretability criteria (Hatcher, 1994): a) The rotated factor pattern has to be a simple structure, meaning that items shall load high on only one factor and low on the other. b) All factors should contain at least three items with significant loadings. The final set of items making up the factors will be determined by iterative deleting items that do not load above 0,4. c) Items loading on the same factor should share the same conceptual meaning and items loading on different factors should appear to measure different constructs. According to Schönrock-Adema et al. (2009), this approach yields interpretable and practically useful factors with less risk of under- or over-factoring and theoretically sensible dimensions that are more in accordance with educational theories. Before analysis, the dataset’s suitability for factor analysis will be evaluated using the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy (KMO > 0.5) and Bartlett’s test of sphericity (p-value < 0.001). Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) with Principal Axis Factoring will be used.

We expect to identify four eco-engagement factors: attitudes, motivation, intentions, and action. The paper discuss the concept of engagement, its origins and original meaning and how it has gradually changed. Furthermore, the paper presents the review-based conceptualization of eco-engagement which consists of four key dimensions: Attitudes, motivation, intentions, and action (Hejl, Qvortrup, Stage, 2025). In our presentation we introduce the dimensions and discuss our operationalizations of them into the eco-engagement survey. We furthermore present the results of the validation of these factors and the level of eco-engagement among Danish young people in upper secondary schools. Based on this we discuss the relevance of including eco-engagement in studies related to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). In doing this, we refer to conceptualizations of Bildung within the field of ESD and generally in the field of didactics.

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