Mitigating and adapting to climate change requires foundational changes in societies, politics, and economies. Greater effectiveness has been attributed to actions in the public sphere than to the actions of individuals. However, little is known about how climate literacy programs address the political aspects of mitigation and adaptation. The aim of this systematic literature review is to fill this gap and analyze how public-sphere actions on mitigation and adaptation are discussed in climate literacy programs in schools. Based on database searches following PRISMA guidelines we identified 75 empirical studies that met our inclusion criteria. We found that central aspects of climate policy such as the 1.5-degree limit, the IPCC reports, or climate justice are rarely addressed. Whilst responsibility for emissions is attributed to the public sphere, the debate about mitigation usually focuses on the private sphere. Climate change education does not, therefore, correspond to the climate research discourse. We show that effective mitigation and adaptation are based on public-sphere actions and thus conclude that effective climate education should discuss those public actions if it is to be effective. Hence, we propose that climate education should incorporate political literacy to educate climate-literate citizens.

Many research articles describe competencies that people need in order to think, develop, and enact a sustainable future. Based on findings from the political economy, this paper argues that it is the macroscopic decisions in the public sphere that have an impact on society and the environment. Therefore, decision makers in the economy, politics, and civil society are important actors to enable a societal transformation towards sustainability by making macroscopic decisions. Based on these assumptions, this empirical research article analyzes the competencies decision makers such as ministers, CEOs, or union leaders need to contribute to a sustainable future in their professional life. We conducted interviews with 14 high-level decision makers and analyzed their competencies based on Wiek et al.’s framework on sustainability competencies. The findings show how they enact and organize the competencies needed for steering the sustainable transition. Linking all competencies is particularly important, especially at the intersection of different systems, to develop a macroscale, system-oriented decision. The authors suggest to consider systems and interpersonal thinking as extremely interdisciplinary competencies and to put a focus on public-sphere actions when educating future leaders. Moreover, the results indicate that dealing with uncertainty, following one’s own values, and building up resilience play a major role for decision makers.

In this era of climate crisis, science education must educate climate-literate citizens capable of steering the required transformation. According to the Vision III of scientific literacy, students need to be equipped with the civic ability to translate scientific knowledge into a values-driven transformation. However, if the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement is taken seriously, not only individual but also (and even more so) collective agency is of great importance to achieve rapid decarbonisation. Currently, science education focuses on promoting personal climate action of individual actors, neglecting the collective dimension and the way group processes shape the appraisal of and response to the climate crisis. To explore how science education can foster collective agency, we utilise the Social Identity Model of Pro-environmental Action (SIMPEA) from the field of environmental psychology. The SIMPEA describes how the three basic social identity processes of ingroup identification, collective efficacy beliefs and ingroup norms and goals influence the appraisal of and response towards a crisis. Based on the SIMPEA, we identify principles of education for transformation (PET) with the potential to enable group identification by individuals, which in turn shape appraisal and response, influencing whether an individual takes action in both the private and public spheres. This conceptual paper discusses five PETs and explores how and which social identity processes they can trigger. The PETs demonstrate that science education has a high potential to facilitate collective agency in the context of climate change. Furthermore, we synthesise key elements of social identity formation in science education, such as the usage of speculative projections into the future.

Das Schweizer Gymnasium soll junge Menschen dazu befähigen, einen aktiven Beitrag zur Lösung zentraler gesellschaftlicher Herausforderungen leisten zu können. Hierfür benötigen Lehrende umfassende Kompetenzen. Der Beitrag untersucht den Stand der Verankerung von Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung (BNE) als Teil transversaler Kompetenzen in der Schweizer Lehrpersonenbildung. Vor dem Hintergrund des aktuellen Lehrplans für die Maturitätsstufe zeigen Analysen von Modulbeschreibungen und Rahmendokumenten auf Hochschulstufe, dass BNE bisher nur vereinzelt und als «Add-on» verankert ist. Auf der Basis vorhandener Empirie zu wirksamer BNE skizziert der Beitrag Entwicklungslinien, etwa die Verknüpfung mit politischer Bildung, den Whole School Approach sowie Bewertungs- und Handlungskompetenzen.