This paper shares a heuristic to support thinking about meaningful transformative education within the context of the contemporary environmental and social crisis. We describe the context of this work and explore the epistemological foundations for this model, which has been evolving and guiding our research and teaching and which underpins the six qualities of meaningful transformative education. The qualities are being open to alternative visions of the future and alternative approaches to education, accepting and embracing complexity, incorporating multiple types of knowledge, reorienting towards justice, developing ecological worldviews and supporting students to bring about systemic change. We also present a series of illustrative vignettes, informed by real-world practices of schools in England, which bring these qualities to life. The vignettes and subsequent discussion highlight possibilities and challenges for enacting a meaningful transformative education in schools.

Teacher education is widely recognised as a key strategy that is yet to be effectively utilised to embed environmental education and/or education for sustainability in schools. This paper reports on a research study that examined a range of pre-service teacher education initiatives, both in Australia and internationally, that were seeking to reorient teacher education towards environmental sustainability. This paper reports on six factors utilised across the initiatives that were critical to their success. These were (1) the nature and length of funding arrangements; (2) the range and quality of partnerships and networks; (3) the curriculum focus and the teaching and learning processes used; (4) the nature of, and incentives for, participant engagement; (5) the level at which a change was being sought; and (6) the use of evaluation as a tool for learning and ongoing improvement. This paper discusses why and how each of these six factors proved critical and explores the implications for initiatives seeking to reorient teacher education towards environmental sustainability.