During recent decades, education for sustainable development (ESD) has been under the scope of the international community, but research in ESD for early childhood education (ECE) is still scarce. This article proposes a procedural framework for the implementation of teacher professional development opportunities in the area. During the first phase, we undertook a systematic review of peer-reviewed articles on ESD for ECE (n = 30). After an expert committee revision of the articles reviewed, three cornerstones (scientific action-integrated, community-based and value-oriented scopes) and three sets of suitable pedagogical approaches (art-based, outdoor-based and project-problem-based) were identified. The review was enhanced by an unsystematic review of articles (n = 26) that specifically referred to the cornerstones and approaches. Finally, a double-blind expert coding and categorization of the articles (n = 56) was performed in order to validate the results. Focusing on guidelines and approaches, different examples found in the literature are presented. This review offers a useful framework to understand and practice ESD in ECE. Unlike previous reviews, it has a practical scope to foster innovative teacher professional development opportunities, inspire teachers and inform policy makers. We conclude with some common challenges and the needs for educational systems to foster science-based citizenship education towards sustainable development in a practical way, fostering agency from an early stage to transform local context, creating global awareness of the environmental, social and economic challenges of the 21st century.

Professional knowledge is highlighted as an important prerequisite of both medical doctors and teachers. Based on recent conceptions of professional knowledge in these fields, knowledge can be differentiated within several aspects. However, these knowledge aspects are currently conceptualized differently across different domains and projects. Thus, this paper describes recent frameworks for professional knowledge in medical and educational sciences, which are then integrated into an interdisciplinary two-dimensional model of professional knowledge that can help to align terminology in both domains and compare research results. The models’ two dimensions differentiate between cognitive types of knowledge and content-related knowledge facets and introduces a terminology for all emerging knowledge aspects. The models’ applicability for medical and educational sciences is demonstrated in the context of diagnosis by describing prototypical diagnostic settings for medical doctors as well as for teachers, which illustrate how the framework can be applied and operationalized in these areas. Subsequently, the role of the different knowledge aspects for acting and the possibility of transfer between different content areas are discussed. In conclusion, a possible extension of the model along a “third dimension” that focuses on the effects of growing expertise on professional knowledge over time is proposed and issues for further research are outlined.