This study investigates the implementation of the “School for Sustainable Life” programme in primary schools in the Czech Republic through the lens of the action-oriented education for sustainable development framework. The research explores the programme’s impact on fostering student leadership and engagement in sustainability initiatives using qualitative methodologies, including three focus groups (N = 18) and interviews with teachers (N = 5). The findings reveal that while the programme significantly enhances students’ understanding and action towards sustainable development, challenges remain in achieving consistent engagement across different school contexts. The study contributes to the ESD discourse by highlighting the crucial role of students’ leadership in implementing sustainability education and providing insights for educators and policymakers.

Impending doom. Fire, drought, floods. This is the image of the environmental future our young people are shown and often set the challenged of “What are you going to do about it.” This is an enormous quest. It is directionless ambition without structure. It is the illusion of agency for change. This article showcases the design decisions of curricula and reflections on using of range of cli-fi and concludes with a set of continua that may help fellow educators in developing cl-fi learning activities including storytelling cards, design sprints, and sci-fi prototyping. They are iterations in the reflective approach to creating experiences that envision positive outcomes. These activities draw on research from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Plants for Space (P4S), which explores sustainable agriculture in extreme environments, like lunar habitats. P4S operates at the intersection of plants, people, technology, and sustainability, fostering critical and creative thinking. By framing sustainable futures in space context, we aim to alleviate environmental anxiety, encourages optimistic, innovative thinking, unconstrained by biological and societal norms. Climate fiction becomes a tool for imagining and realising new technologies, enabling students to create and critique possibilities beyond Earth’s current limitations.

An urban forest school, London, UK: Stegosaurus (self-chosen pseudonym) is crouching and looking down intently at something on the ground. I notice he is rubbing two pieces of chalk in his hands. Chalk gently sprinkles over blades of grass, covering each leaf in a white dust.

A wall-less school, Bali: Paintbrush hails me. I pick her up, stroking her smooth, moist bristles likening them to fur. Between my fingers, I roll her brittle wooden handle backwards and forwards, imagining that this could be a twig, bone or spine.

What if we were to attend to the peculiarities of these material encounters?

How might Chalk and Paintbrush enact wild pedagogies?

Chalk and paintbrushes are everyday objects in educational settings and traditional, dominant pedagogies focus on how humans use these objects to support learning. Drawing on two material-multispecies moments from our posthumanist, feminist, materialist inquiries, we think-with rather than about Chalk and Paintbrush as intra-acting, co-creators of knowledge. These provide ways for becoming-wild that resist the anthropocentric, developmental and civilising processes so deeply imbued in educational approaches. Instead, becoming-wild offers hopeful and generative wild pedagogies that acknowledge the power of the everyday, ignored and divergent that strengthen and expand all our response-abilities.

The signals and consequences of, and currently overall eco-socio-cultural inadequate responses to, the pressing climate and biodiversity crises of the Anthropocene foster a landscape of repression, hopelessness and anxiety among many, not least young people. As young people today seem to primarily encounter dystopian future narratives, this article tells a story about how playing an open-ended, solarpunk, character-driven cli-fi tabletop roleplaying game together with young people might nurture non-dystopic engagements. Designed as both a research and educational playspace, the game invites participants to become co-researchers and co-narrators engaged in imagining life-friendly futures, attempting to push the boundaries of environmental and sustainability education research. In conversation with the theoretical inspirations of the game — post-Anthropocene pedagogy, climate literacy research and SF multispecies storytelling — the article discusses insights from the first prototype playtests. When the game flows, it produces engagements with speculative futures and understandings of hope’s relational and complex character. When it halts, it reveals challenges around participation, social context and setting, pointing to directions for further research and game alterations.

This article explores and discusses the change processes and pedagogical dilemmas ignited by introducing wild pedagogies to pedagogical employees in Danish early childhood institutions. By analysing experiments aimed at developing new play and learning environments, carried out as part of a large design-based research project, we discuss how existing “roots” of early childhood education in Denmark provide a fertile soil for the introduction of wild pedagogies. We identify two “shoots of change” with a potential for pushing the status quo in relations between children, adults, and more-than-human nature. Centreing on altering the place of nature in early childhood education and carving out time for more open approaches, these shoots are in close dialogue with wild pedagogies. By experimenting with these shoots of change, pedagogical dilemmas became more visible, important, and present to the participants. Attending to and exploring such dilemmas are crucial aspects of keeping socio-cultural change processes in motion.

This paper aims to enhance our understanding of the challenges teachers engaged in Education for Sustainability (EfS) in New Zealand face when using social media for professional learning. An online questionnaire, including open-ended questions, was distributed to Enviroschools lead teachers nationwide to investigate these challenges. The study identifies key barriers, including time constraints, information overload, concerns about privacy and trust, and the perceived misalignment between the hands-on nature of EfS and the virtual nature of social media. Participants expressed a strong preference for face-to-face learning, emphasising its value for meaningful collaboration and practical engagement. The study highlights the need for systemic support to address these barriers. It suggests that integrating teacher professional learning through social media into teachers’ working hours could significantly enhance their engagement in professional learning for EfS.

Framed by biological and environmental education, this paper addresses eight questions posed in Wild Pedagogies: Touchstones for Re-Negotiating Education and the Environment in the Anthropocene. These questions ponder more-than-human methodologies, positionality of the natural world, embedded anthropocentricism and research implications for the natural world. Wild pedagogues aim to reclaim and reimagine an educational system toward intentional praxis less reliant on quantifiable learning outcomes, with a move toward active, ‘‘self-willed pedagogy’’ with an agential nature as co-teacher. This bold enterprise challenges dominant Western-colonial paradigms rooted in power and control over nature and learners. My responses explore Tim Ingold’s notion of a ‘‘modest, humble, and attentive’’ science, ecocentric place-based research, questions dissection and animal experimentation, and offers Goethean science and Indigenous philosophy as alternatives to rational-reductionist Newtonian science. Lab-based science is contrasted with natural history, and creative, contemplative practice are suggested as tools of the wild researcher. How can we transform science education through the lenses of deep ecology and philosophical posthumanism? This paper contributes to the ongoing dialogue of ecological and environmental education during the Anthropocene, especially in regard to the life sciences and the often-unquestioned use of nonhuman animals in science teaching and research.

Many young people feel distressed about climate change, and pessimistic about what the future holds. Gaps in education about climate change contribute to limited understanding of opportunities for climate mitigation and adaptation, and to a pervasive “discourse of doom.” Here we describe a “game for change” co-designed by climate and education researchers and young people, that aims to shift narratives about climate changed futures toward an active, adaptation-oriented focus.

The Heat Is On is designed to be played by high school classes. Set in 2050, the game takes place on a fictional island called “Adaptania.” Teams of students play the role of town councillors in communities facing the same challenges that Australian towns are experiencing as the climate heats up, including flooding, heatwaves, bushfires, inequality, health issues and economic challenges. By focussing on decision-making for adaptation and resilience, The Heat Is On enables participants to envision climate-changed futures in which communities can thrive. Students learn how to plan and collaborate to prepare for diverse and cascading impacts of climate hazards. We explore the potential for games in climate education, focussing on The Heat Is On as a case study, and share initial learnings from its development and implementation in schools.

Situated amidst the breathtaking Himalayas and the Arabian Sea, Pakistan grapples with escalating environmental challenges, compounded by the impending threat of climate change. This article delves into the imperative of reshaping primary education in Pakistan to address the pressing issues of environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. The article endeavours a content analysis of the themes prevailing in the primary textbooks which uphold anthropocentric and capitalist values. Recognising education as a catalyst for change, the article argues for a paradigm shift, particularly within the realms of primary school science and general knowledge education, by integrating eco-justice pedagogies and contemplative approaches. Prevailing educational paradigms, heavily influenced by Western perspectives, often reinforce anthropocentric and capitalist ideologies that prioritise human exploitation of nature. To address these inherent shortcomings, the article advocates for cultivating a love for nature from an early age as a means of fostering a profound connection between children and the natural world.

This article explores multispecies climate fiction as a mode of inquiry that speculates-with other-than-humans. To explore cli-fi’s potential in research, I position speculative fiction in the field of research-creation, a praxis that combines artistic exploration with scholarly inquiry. Adopting a research-creation approach, I wrote the multispecies cli-fi story Canopy of the Hidden Alley. The story emerged from the Multispecies City Lab project, a participatory research project that invited participants to imagine multispecies life in urban areas affected by climate change. I engaged creatively with the research findings of the Multispecies City Lab project, using participants’ imaginaries as a proposition to write the cli-fi story. In this article, the story Canopy of the Hidden Alley is presented alongside methodological reflections on speculative fiction and research-creation, as well as theoretical conceptualizations of what it means to speculate-with other-than-humans in climate fiction. This article discusses the potentiality of speculative fiction as a form of research-creation, demonstrating how creative writing enabled deeper engagement with issues of identity and positionality, social and relational hierarchies and the interplay of multiple temporalities, which guided toward new understandings of multispecies entanglements in the context of climate change and speculative climate futures.

The realisation that climate tipping points may be triggered in the upcoming decades underscores the urgent need for transformative educational responses to the climate crisis that integrate scientific knowledge with socio-political dimensions. However, the consolidation of Education for Sustainable Development has gradually displaced Environmental Education (EE) from institutional and academic spaces, shifting the focus away from systemic critiques of the socio-economic drivers of the environmental crisis. Through a historical perspective on the consolidation of the paradigm of sustainable development, this article calls for an EE capable of addressing the root causes rather than the symptoms of anthropogenic climate change, contending that the survival of EE as an independent, counter-hegemonic field is essential for fostering transformative educational practices that confront climate emergency.

This paper begins with crises; environmental, social and democratic. And then it posits that in the midst of these crises there might be an opportunity. One that involves not so much “saving” democracy and sustaining current ways of life but shifting attentions towards potentially creating (re-creating) something different. Something we are calling eco-democracy. There have long been voices, calling for a more environmentally thoughtful form of democracy. After tracing a short discussion of this history including some of the critiques we turn to an exploration of eco-democracy in environmental education. Our argument is that some forms of environmental education are already thinking in more eco-democratic ways without necessarily naming the project as such. In order to do this, we focus on five ‘seedlings’ of eco-democracy that already exist in environmental education. These seedlings allow us to do two things. First, draw connections to Wild Pedagogies and second draw out four key considerations for environmental educators if they are interested in having more eco-democratic practices: voice, consent, self-determination and kindness. The paper ends with a short speculative exploration of what might happen pedagogically if environmental education were to assume an eco-democratic orientation through honouring voice, consent, self-determination, and kindness.

This article explores strategies for rewilding pedagogy through three life-opening arts-based educational practices: nature writing, propositions, and minor experiences. Drawing on wild pedagogies, diverse perspectives on life, and various approaches to arts education, we examine how these practices can be twisted to promote life-friendly education, in support of more-than-human life, disrupting life-forgetful educational and societal norms. By reflecting on the (re)wilding strategies and their actual as well as imagined outcomes, we offer ideas on how to break with dominant conceptions of education and life in the Anthropocene.

This article examines the transformative potential of the 2CG® (Content- and Context-specific Generic Competency Coaching) method in advancing climate education across disciplines, hierarchies, and cultures. Drawing on case studies and theoretical insights, it demonstrates how this multi-method approach deepens emotional engagement through imagination, challenges entrenched behaviours, and supports the development of climate-responsive competencies. By integrating polyphonic storytelling, poetry, the arts, and climate fiction, the 2CG® framework empowers learners to critically engage with ecological issues and adopt climate-conscious behaviours. Central to the approach is the co-creation of climate imaginaries — transformative narratives that interweave human and more-than-human perspectives to foster deep reflection, relational awareness, and contextually grounded action. Overall, this pedagogical model cultivates the cognitive, emotional, and dialogical capacities learners need to navigate complexity and contribute meaningfully to just and regenerative transitions.

In the edginess of our predicament, violences of the -isms (capitalism, colonialism, imperialism) impact life: ecological degradation and inequalities are some matters of concern and care, regionally and planetary. Such crisis accentuates the call for relational education, a worlding process emerging within and being immanent to practice, probing power-relations, decentring the human and highlighting the enmeshment of peoples and environment. Wilding pedagogies is one way of responding to such call. This contribution, a postqualitative assemblage, attends to the formation of wild as a philosophical concept emerging in-practice working the relationality of theory, artmaking and storying. It defamiliarizes domesticated visions of education by mapping the movement of practices of peoples and conditions of life in (and beyond) Southeast Mediterranean. In so doing, it problematises new materialist, Deleuzoguattarian and indigenous philosophies and cosmologies and suggests such frictions crucial for environmental education. I re-visit and re-enliven — in Karen Barad’s discussion — projects with children, communities, and the more-than-human world in Southeast Mediterranean through artistic (urban sketching) and teaching-pedagogical practice probing wildings as dynamic, unfolding process refuting isolation and fixity. Wildings emerges as differentiating process reworking ethical relations, intensifying and nuancing wild pedagogies and re-imagining environmental education.

These excerpts from Inbetweenness, an upcoming hopepunk novel, intertwine eco-social justice narratives and Indigenous education through climate fiction. Inbetweenness challenges Western-centric paradigms by highlighting diverse voices and posthumanist perspectives, focusing on the tension between contemporary environmental crises and Indigenous knowledge systems. It features characters like Joanne Penderwith, a graduate student navigating social justice, ecological connection, and decolonial praxis, inviting readers to reflect on allyship and positionality within activism. The novel also juxtaposes human-centric actions with the voices of other-than-human entities, using multi-species ethnography to embody ecological storytelling. A pivotal segment details Joanne’s transformative experience at a salmon ceremony led by the W̱SÁNEĆ First Nations, showcasing the resilience of Indigenous practices and their potential to guide sustainable futures. Inbetweenness uses fiction-based research methods grounded in 20 years of transdisciplinary research. It critiques performative allyship and advocates for authentic relationships with Indigenous communities, proposing a hopeful approach to environmental education and climate action.

We resonated with the idea that dreaming is important, and that climate fiction is a way of dreaming with environmental educators. A well of resistance lives in art collaborations around the world which harness the power of the collective to face terrible realities and twist, bend, and dance them into alternative hopeful pasts, presents and futures. Engaging with other people and more-than-human lives, through creative collaborations have led us to understand complex and unfamiliar perspectives in ways that are unreachable alone, regardless of how much academic study we do. This story emerged from online meetings that crossed time zones and oceans: Vancouver to Istanbul. Our climate fiction surfaced from improvised, spontaneous story creation. It was as if the story was waiting for us to find her, if we acted with care and love while facing directly our own dark shadows and fears about climate catastrophe. This story of Cassandra, alongside our interpretations of its emergence, invites the reader to draw from any evoked confusion or other feelings as well as their own learnings to reflect on burdens of knowledge not acted upon. Leaning into confusion is a way to open up to the power of uncertainty for environmental education.

This article explores what we identify as two forms of intuition. The first is a form called teacher-intuition, which is described as expertise-based, rational, and individualised. The second form, relational-intuition, is inspired by Intuitive Interspecies Communication and presented as an embodied, reflexive, and connected way of being with/in the more-than-human world. Guided by hermeneutic methodology, anecdotes and research vignettes aid in understanding the ontological and epistemological differences of these two intuitions. We consider how teacher-intuition might unduly limit the possibilities available for ecologically minded pedagogies, especially in comparison to relational-intuition, which opens more ontologically diverse ways to be teacher — thereby expanding one’s options for interacting with students and creating space for ecological connection. Wild Pedagogies (Jickling et al., 2018) is drawn upon to help situate relational-intuition. We conclude with questions that educators may consider with regards to the form and range of their own intuitions, with a view to perhaps bringing forward more relational forms.