Professionals in various fields of business, administration and civil society are crucial for mainstreaming sustainability and realizing socio-ecological transformation processes. However, adult education has so far been underrepresented in the discourse on education for sustainable development (ESD). Many “approaches to education for sustainable development (ESD) prioritize the context of schooling and/or formal education” (Schreiber-Barsch and Mauch 2019, p. 519). Additionally, review results on the assessment of learning outcomes from the field of ESD and Global Education show that only a small number of studies refer to learning in the field of adult education or further education (O’Flaherty and Liddy 2018). While there is a growing number of competency models in the field, such as the EU's GreenComp Framework (Bianchi et al. 2022), there is little empirical evidence on training and professional development programs to evaluate the development of competencies for supporting and accelerating social-ecological transformation processes (authors, in print). Existing programs, such as those offered by academies, rarely formulate specific learning objectives and make little reference to theories of adult education. Although there are sophisticated theories in adult education, such as transformative learning (Mezirow 2000), which focus on the fundamental changes in meaning perspectives in adulthood and are also highly compatible with the field of ESD (Ball 1999, Alam 2022), it remains a gap how adults experience transformative learning processes in training programs for sustainability. In Mezirow's phase model, irritations often mark the beginning of transformative learning processes and can be processed particularly well if there is an ideal space for discourse in which to exchange the emotions that arise in the process. With few exceptions (e.g. Sims 2012, Moore et al. 2018) it is an open question, how training programs can foster adults’ transformative learning processes in the context of sustainability. Additionally, the claim of constructive alignment – i.e. the alignment of learning objectives based on respective theories, specific didactic elements in the realization of educational programs and evaluation approaches – is rarely put into practice in professional development, unlike in the general discourse on ESD in higher education (ibid.).

Against this background, the research project had the aim of developing and testing an evaluation concept for an academy of a European environmental agency. The target group of the academy consists of international professionals from public administration, businesses and civil society organizations working on solutions for pressing sustainability issues. The topics of the training programs range from anti-corruption or greenhouse gas-neutral administration to broader topics like promoting resilience to navigating uncertainty. The evaluation concept envisages a multi-methods design with the integration of qualitative as well as quantitative methods (see section methodologies).

The paper takes into account the overall results of the evaluation with a total number of more than 100 participants in various training formats (digital and analog) but focuses particularly on 8 problem-centered interviews with participants who took part in a face-to-face workshop “Preventing Corruption” in a sustainability context as well as in a longer process on “Navigating Uncertainty” with online-sessions and a face-to-face exchange during a conference on Global Sustainability and Partnerships. The central research question is which incidents were particularly important for the participants’ learning journey and which specific didactic elements of the training and the general discourse between fellow learners play in this.

The various academy events include different formats (from 2-hours digital workshops to 3-day face-to-face workshops). The academy established a variety of pedagogical methods applied in these learning environments. A particular background theory within the conceptualization of the different events was the Theory U (Scharmer 2018). Additionally embodied methods, like breath-ing and meditation techniques or reflection walks, as well as the method of the case clinic – ena-bling the participants to directly work on their own pressing questions – were applied. The evaluation project began with the discussion and specification of learning objectives for the academy formats, because these had not been specifically defined at the start of the project and therefore an evaluation was not yet possible. To this end, a scoping review (Gutierrez-Bucheli et al. 2022) of the international literature on the key competencies of sustainability professionals was conducted (authors, accepted). Based on the learning goals identified, concrete evaluation methods were developed and had to be adapted over the course of the project. In the virtual workshop sessions, primarily participatory observation (Clark et al. 2009) was used to determine the activity level of the participants. In addition, short surveys were conducted after the events to assess the participants' satisfaction with the respective academy events, the network and the moderation. Although a detailed pre-post survey with first assessments of key competencies was developed based on the review results, it could only be used in a rudimentary way for one training format due to the de-privileging of longer-term events and the increasing focus on several individ-ual and short term events. The evaluation results reported in this paper focus on eight problem-centered interviews (Witzel 2000) with participants from two training formats: a 3-day face-to-face workshop on “Preventing Corruption” and a 7-month long virtual exchange on “Navigating Uncer-tainty” that resulted in the joint participation of an international conference on-site. The interviews were conducted online, recorded and fully transcribed. Afterwards they were analyzed using MAXQDA and applying a content-structuring content analysis (Kuckartz 2019). The overall goal was to explore whether transformative learning processes could be reconstructed, and which elements of the program had influenced the learning journeys. The results of the 4 interview pro-cesses on “Navigating Uncertainty” can be supplemented by the results of the pre-post survey (n=11/15) as well as some insights from the participatory observation.

While the data from the more quantitatively oriented evaluation approaches have already been fully analyzed, the analysis of the interviews is still ongoing. The results of the pre-post survey show that of the four competence areas examined (systemic thinking, interpersonal competence, intrapersonal competence and implementation competence), participants in the “Navigating Un-certainty” training reported the greatest increase in systemic thinking. This could be related to the strong focus on presenting and discussing specific cases from the day-to-day work of some par-ticipants in the case clinic method, which was also emphasized as significant in many interviews. From the point of view of the participants interviewed, the international composition of both groups was extremely enriching and challenging at the same time. On the one hand, the partici-pants could expand their international network and, especially in the case of the more focused “Preventing Corruption” process, initiate concrete cooperation activities, which were reported on even more than a year after the workshop (e.g. joint publications). On the other hand, linguistic, cultural and technical challenges were reported from both processes. Particularly surprising for some participants – and an indication of potential transformative learning processes – was the openness and lack of pre-structuring of the events. The more embodied exercises, such as mind-fulness practices and reflection walks in the “Preventing Corruption” workshop, were also re-membered as particularly intense, and participants reported that they were incorporating these methods into their daily work. Taken together, the interviews show that the training sessions were too short to trigger far-reaching transformative learning processes. Nevertheless, elements were positively highlighted that are also considered crucial in the transformative learning theory, such as the quality of discourse between learners. Overall, the evaluation results can be helpful for the development of further training and advance the state of research in the context of adult education.

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