Design Toolkit for Climate & Sustainability Education

Purpose and function 

Rather than offering 'plug and play' materials, the Design Toolkit guides educators through design processes by framing decisions related to Climate & Sustainability education. It provides design principles and practical guidance for creating Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) assessments that can be adapted to your own courses. The toolkit is explicitly aligned with the Climate & Sustainability Intended Learning Outcomes: 

ILO 1: Account for climate and sustainability realities/facts in crafting context-specific courses of action to tackle societal challenges that relate to climate change and/or the broader challenge of sustainable development. 

ILO 2: Develop their/your own (current and future, personal and professional) role in tackling societal challenges that relate to climate change and/or sustainable development. 

These ILOs recognize that sustainability education must go beyond knowledge transfer to support students in developing their capacity to navigate complexity, question dominant narratives, and take meaningful action in uncertain contexts. 

This Design Toolkit is a product from the Comenius Teaching Fellow project "Education for Sustainable Development: The Missing Link for Constructive Alignment" (2024-2026) to address this challenge. It serves as a stepping stone from theoretical ESD aims to usable educational practice, offering practical guidance. 

Three design principles 

The toolkit is organized around three interconnected principles for sustainability education design: 

1. Value-Based: Learning environments and activities expose the dominant (socio-economic) narratives underlying them. 
   Education is never neutral. This principle makes values and assumptions in educational design explicit, guiding educators to surface narratives and support students in building their own perspectives. 
2. Dialogue-Oriented: Learning environments and activities stimulate meaningful dialogue about who we are, how we relate to each other and the world, and what narratives guide us. 
   This principle shifts from instruction-based to dialogue-based learning, creating spaces for students to examine identity, relationships, and narratives essential for developing their roles in sustainability transitions. 
3. Design Forward: Members of the learning environment emphasize the kinds of relationships and activities that facilitate emergence. 
   Unlike backward design with fixed outcomes, this principle focuses on designing learning environments that support intended learning processes and allow for emergent learning while maintaining quality and rigor. 

What the toolkit contains 

The Design Toolkit provides for each principle: 

• Why it matters: The theoretical grounding alongside ESD ambitions 
• Application guidance: Practical direction for designing learning environments, activities, and assessment 
• Illustrated examples: Concrete examples from a case course showing the principles in action 
• Reflection prompts: Questions to guide adaptation to your specific context 
• Common challenges: Anticipated tensions and strategies for navigating institutional constraints 

How to use this toolkit 

The toolkit follows a Two-Lane Approach to Assessment, distinguishing between Lane 1 (secure assessment of learning for institutional requirements) and Lane 2 (open assessment for transformative learning through embedded, iterative processes). This framework helps you work within institutional structures while creating space for transformative learning. 

Whether you're designing a new sustainability course or redesigning assessment in an existing program, this toolkit helps you create assessment that genuinely supports transformative learning aligned with Climate & Sustainability ILOs.