Transformative learning in educational sustainability as collective resilience and resistance

Transformative learning in educational sustainability as collective resilience and resistance

Over the last two years, I have been conducting research on how doctoral students experience transformative learning in an educational sustainability program. We define transformative learning as a process that engages the head, heart, and hands in critical reflection, values introspection, social engagement, and empowerment towards sustainability (Grund et al., 2024; Papastamatis and Panitsides, 2014; Sipos et al., 2008). The transformative learning journey is not a straight line, rather it is dynamic, fluid, adaptive, and recursive in nature, allowing each learner to experience it differently (Boström et al., 2018; Grund et al., 2024; Rodríguez Aboytes and Barth, 2020). We argue that although a transformative moment can occur within an individual, transformative learning is a social and collaborative process.

I am the director of the educational sustainability program and an associate professor, teaching many courses within the program. I have loved learning from students on how, to what extent, and when they experience transformative learning, but the process is mutual. As much as the students have been transformed, so have I. Over the last year, the attacks on sustainability have changed these relationships and created a different type of transformative learning, one that feels like collective resistance. The emotional trauma of seeing these attacks has led to a deeper kinship, one that binds us together through this struggle and collective desire to build a safe space for all.

Sustainability education in a hostile political environment

I define sustainability as the morally courageous pursuit of a just, inclusive, and equitable future where humans and the environment can thrive. However, this pursuit can come with fatigue and advocating for change is not without struggle. As change agents, we take on those struggles in the hope of moving forward in a different way—one that reflects justice and equity. We learn from the past and challenge White Supremacy culture and systems of domination. We see the interdependence of environmental and human health and treat the environment as a stakeholder in our decision-making.

On the morning of November 5th, 2024, I woke to a Trump victory, which all but sealed the destruction of equity and inclusivity movements in U.S. higher education institutions. The topics that lay the foundation of sustainability education—social justice, ecological health, cultural inclusivity, and equitable access to resources—all lay on the chopping board. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, the weight of what this means to me, to my students, barreled down on me. I was teaching a class entitled, “Social Justice for a Sustainable Society,” and my students were preparing case studies on reparative futures (Sriprakash et al., 2020); but how was I supposed to show up for this authentically, knowing the just futures they were imagining will be under attack for at least the next four years?

I did show up for my classes and for my students, but it was different. In some cases, I cried with my students, in others, I urged them to keep going, to not let this hostile political environment silence them and their achievements. I fiercely defended this program as a safe space for all, especially in this time of difficulty. My job changed, my relationship with my students changed. Working together through our pain and vulnerability, we found a collective strength and supported each other in a way that increased our resilience to do the work of sustainability.

Building strength through vulnerability

One of the features of our program that builds relationships, and collective learning is the one-week, in-person residency that is required every summer for three years. The educational sustainability doctoral program is online, except for this yearly residency. The residency is frequently mentioned by our students as one of the most transformative experiences in the program. This year (June 2025), I took a different approach to planning the residency. Rather than bringing computers and learning about sustainability competencies and research methods, we focused on the heart and hands parts of transformative learning (Sipos et al., 2008) and the social and emotional connections between each other (Papastamatis and Panitsides, 2014).

I planned activities for us that would require leaving our devices behind and connecting with nature and each other, like canyoning (repelling down waterfalls). The canyoning experience, in many ways, mirrored the transformative learning design of the program—it required collaboration, had moments of difficulty, struggle, and vulnerability, and concluded with a sense of collective strength, resilience, and empowerment.

The students similarly reflected on how canyoning was transformative and created a unique bond through vulnerability and trust. One student wrote about the canyoning experience:

Everyone that participated in that experience was truly vulnerable and also supportive of each other. We had to let our guards down to focus on completing the journey down the canyon and leaned on each other to do so. That required a significant amount of trust and literal handholding.

In the end, we were closer with our peers after the canyoning experience

Another student reflected on the emotional safety created through this experience:

One particularly memorable experience that fostered the community was the canyoneering trip, where we rappelled down an 80-foot waterfall.

Supporting each other through adrenaline (and fear) led us to encouragement and emotional safety.

Yet another student reflected on the emotional support and kinship that this experience fostered:

The descent through all the waterfalls was not only physically grueling, but emotionally intense. What surprised me, however, was the way my peers checked in with me—offering emotional support and words of affirmation without judgment. In that moment, I felt seen and held. There was a sense of mutual care that went beyond casual classmate interaction and moved toward a deeper kind of kinship.

The fact that I faced my fear, endured the pain, and still came away feeling proud says a lot about the strength and healing I’ve cultivated.

The canyoning experience pushed many people’s physical and emotional limits, but together we were strong, resilient, and could tackle anything put in our path. The canyoning became an analogy for our relationships in this program and our pursuit of sustainability.

We may feel fear, face struggles, even trauma, but through vulnerability, trust, and support, together, we can persist.

This one experience is not the full story, but it does provide a glimpse into the shared experience of striving and struggling for sustainability in a time of difficulty and finding that together we are more resilient. It also opens the conversation for viewing transformative learning as a physical and emotional endeavor, rather than primarily cognitive.

I started 2025 full of fear and sadness. I came to my classes with that vulnerability—with tears and at a loss for any answers or solutions to the hardships we are facing. My students held my hand as much as I held theirs. The determination that I feel today to use everything I have to uplift their voices and ensure that they have this program as a space for healing, hope, and emotional safety is more steadfast than ever. I am transformed by the strength I see in our collective capacity.

Transformative learning as a form of collective resistance

Transformative learning is a recursive and co-generated process. Educators must be willing to be vulnerable, open, and receptive to growth and change. In this way, we are not experts disseminating knowledge; instead, we are learning alongside our students and growing because of them. Also, sometimes in advocating for sustainability, we need to take time away from writing, reading, and presenting to build our resilience as change agents with our community.  

I feel more engaged and enraged to fight for a sustainable future today than I have ever felt in the past. Holding this space where we could be vulnerable, created emotional safety, and from that space of safety and support, I can continue to fight and advocate for a more just future.

ECER 2025 – Presentation

To learn more about the educational sustainability students and their perspectives on transformative learning, please attend our presentation at ECER:

“Multi-year study on Students’ Transformative Learning Journey through an Educational Sustainability Doctoral Program”
Session Number: 30 SES 02 B
Session Title: 30 SES 02 B: Education and Transformation
Session Location: University of Belgrade, room tbc
Session Time: 09/Sept/2025, 15:15 – 16:45

Dr. Erin Redman

Dr. Erin Redman

University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, USA.

Erin Redman is the program director and associate professor of Educational Sustainability in the School of Education at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Prof. Redman comes to UWSP from Leuphana University of Luneburg (Germany) where she has been a research associate and program lead on an international sustainability education collaboration for the Global Consortium of Sustainability Outcomes (GCSO). Prior to joining Leuphana, Prof. Redman created and led the Sustainability Teachers’ Academy, a professional development program for in-service teachers from all over the United States. She was also a faculty member at the National University of Mexico (UNAM), where she integrated sustainability throughout their undergraduate programs as well as designed a stand-alone sustainability undergraduate program. https://www.uwsp.edu/directory/profile/erin-redman/

ECER Belgrade 2025

Since the first ECER in 1992, the conference has grown into one of the largest annual educational research conferences in Europe. In 2025, the EERA family heads to Serbia for ECER and ERC.

08 - 09 September 2025 - Emerging Researchers' Conference
09 - 12 September 2025 - European Conference on Educational Research

Find out about fees and registration here.

Since the first ECER in 1992, the conference has grown into one of the largest annual educational research conferences in Europe. In 2025, the EERA family heads to Serbia for ECER and ERC.

In Belgrade, the conference theme is Charting the Way Forward: Education, Research, Potentials and Perspectives

No doubt that education has a central role in society, but what it is destined to do is contested politically as well as scientifically. Yet more debate is had concerning the question of the way in which educational research should shape the future of educational practice. The important, but sensitive role educational research occupies in that regard should be the promotion of a better understanding of the contemporary and future world of education, as is expressed in EERA’s aim.

Emerging Researchers' Conference - Belgrade 2025

The Emerging Researchers' Conference (ERC) precedes ECER and is organised by EERA's Emerging Researchers' Group. Emerging researchers are uniquely supported to discuss and debate topical and thought-provoking research projects in relation to the ECER themes, trends and current practices in educational research year after year. The high-quality academic presentations during the ERC are evidence of the significant participation and contributions of emerging researchers to the European educational research community.

By participating in the ERC, emerging researchers have the opportunity to engage with world class educational research and to learn the priorities and developments from notable regional and international researchers and academics. The ERC is purposefully organised to include special activities and workshops that provide emerging researchers varied opportunities for networking, creating global connections and knowledge exchange, sharing the latest groundbreaking insights on topics of their interest. Submissions to the ERC are handed in via the standard submission procedure.

Prepare yourself to be challenged, excited and inspired.

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A collective becoming of emerging environmental and sustainability education researchers

A collective becoming of emerging environmental and sustainability education researchers

 It is not surprising that a group of individuals interested in Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) would share values and common interests. Yet, it would perhaps be surprising if a meeting of such individuals resulted in the creation of an almost ‘ready-made’ community. And that this community – of people who work in very different fields, with diverse backgrounds and life experiences – would willingly forgo the competitive nature of performative academic events, but rather adopt an openness that disarmed from the outset.
“One of the most important experiences on the PhD journey.” 

This may seem like a hyperbolic description of the four days of Transformative Learning in Sustainability: a pluriversal approach Seasonal School in Karlsruhe, funded by EERA’s NW 30 and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), but the event enabled interactions that have influenced and informed our lives as Early Career Researchers (ECRs).

To express and perhaps explain the experience, we offer five aspects of researcher identity emergent at the Seasonal School: place and becoming, embodied, connected, brave, and hopeful. We want to share our collective experience to show the importance of participating in in-person Seasonal Schools as ECRs to network, find/create community and engage in exchange through the lens of transformative learning.

We have written collectively and used ‘we’ in most instances. Our individual voices have also been included as ‘I’. The use of ‘we’ refers to the six co-authors – we appreciate the experiences of other participants and mentors may differ.

Caterpillars on a verdant bush

Image Description: A picture of something symbolising our research from a walk in the Schlossgarten as we got to know the surroundings. This one symbolises emotions one may feel when encountering something new, such as disgust, fear, hope, and joy. Credit: Emma Heikkilä. 

Place and becoming

“In less than a week, I felt more at home in Karlsruhe than I do in the town where I was born and raised.”

The fan-shaped city of Karlsruhe was central to our experience. With the embodied experience of journeying to Germany’s early summer, one could not but smile. The trees were already green, people were spending time in the park, and one could easily sit in a Biergarten. There was something homely about Karlsruhe, a peaceful atmosphere – no wonder the name Karlsruhe translates from German to “Karl’s peace”. 

Most of us were surprised by how much time we spent outside the formal settings of KIT, having experienced conferences where connection with the surroundings is optional. The first activity was to silently walk in the Schlossgarten. Later, we felt warmly welcomed at Kulturküche – an experimental public space for art and culture- for our first dinner. Another evening, we were led on a beautifully curated ‘sustainable city walking tour’, where we encountered a permanent high-top circus tent, community gardens, and eastern Karlsruhe, which turned our attention to the residents’ lives.

Raised planting beds in a communal garden filled with vegetables and herbs
Image Description: Karlsruhe Community Gardens, May 2024. Credit: Eleftheria Iakovidou

Embodied

“I cannot describe the affective relation to Karlsruhe in other words than “I fell in love with Karlsruhe.”

Often, we find ourselves as minds in front of a computer, but in Karlsruhe, we were learning, participating, and researching in an embodied way. The long, immersive days surrounded us with like-minded individuals as we collectively sought deeper understandings of ESE research and practice. 

Beginning with a programme of workshops and talks, including a world café event, we had opportunities to connect, deepened by sharing our vegetarian meals. The programme kept us moving; we took our whole selves outside, made maps, walked, chatted, and wrote. We had moved into a liminal space, set apart from our usual routine and places and were invited into this new space, to think with new objects, people, and ideas.

More uncomfortable learning spaces were those that challenged us, invited us to consider other methodological perspectives, and learn from contextual circumstances in different countries. They also showed us the value of coming together as a diverse group of ECRs. Through conversations with others, with clay, and with ourselves in our diaries, we could sit with feelings of discomfort – physical, emotional and mental –  that were raised during the Seasonal School. Slowly, the discomfort faded.

A group of people sit in a park, surrounded by trees

Image Description: Participants writing in their diaries while sitting in Schlossgarten, close to KIT. Credit: Julia Skilton.

Connected

“I will remember Karlsruhe as a defining aspect of my PhD – deepening my thinking, feeling and connections.”

During those four days, we experienced a dual connection between ourselves and with the environment. What started with an outdoor getting-to-know-you activity slowly developed into a sense of community. The variety of structured and unstructured activities created spaces for us to connect over shared use of theoretical frameworks, links between our projects, mutual personal interests and shared ideas. Experiential learning activities in diverse settings, such as the university park, allowed us to connect with the environment. In conversations with clay, we realised the ways we affected the clay and how it affected us; learning to listen to its voice, experiment, and explore creative avenues.

This allowed us to connect with the more-than-human world through embodied experiences, and engage in collective discussions and collaboration. The notion of a network driven by more than impact and outcomes was important to our discussions throughout the four days and in our plans to collaborate in the future. Karlsruhe has been a significant part of our journey of connecting with others and the environment, and ‘becoming’ sustainable education researchers.

Image Description: Selected clay artefacts from our “Conversations with Clay” Session. Credit: Sarah Strachan.

Brave

“Sustainability isn’t all beauty and loveliness – it means facing up to challenging uncomfortable situations and working forward with it.” 

As ECRs, there is pressure to present our work. Often before we are comfortable with it ourselves, we share our work with others who usually want to critique (or criticise) our ideas and methods. Despite our shared motivation to build research careers, during the Seasonal School, there was a lack of competition that is often present at similar events. In presenting our research through a poster and small group discussion, we shared concerns and ideas about things that excited us, which we felt would inform each other’s work.

Through activities where no one was an expert, we gained confidence in the support available. In accepting our vulnerability, we were made brave. Our differences enabled us to stand apart together and share without fear. Together, we embraced being in a liminal space on our shared PhD journeys, a place where we set aside our egos without even realising it.

Image Description: Statue of ‘Der Denker’ made by Karl-Heinz Krause in Schlossgarten. Credit: Emma Heikkilä.

Hopeful

What initially connected us is our ESE research, which is entangled with the horrors of climate change, environmental disasters, and gross exploitation. Simultaneously, we are learning to navigate complex and unsustainable structures of academia (continuous competition for resources, high pressure on publishing, and efficiency requirements). Finding ourselves in the midst of working with emotionally challenging topics, we may feel alone and exhausted under the burden of the “publish or perish” mentality. We shared our thoughts on this in a dedicated fishbowl discussion.

We addressed hope and hopelessness, and many agreed that we cannot accept hopelessness. However, it often seems as if the work is left to the individual to not give up. Where do we find hope? Can we research if we are hopeless? Maybe hope should not be seen as a stable, binary matter. Hopelessness may also elucidate valuable insights of what to prioritise, and how to (re)gain hope.

Hope can be found in connections to others – finding a sense of belonging, being with each other and reaching the person behind the professional. Sharing our messy ideas, half-baked thoughts, and insecurities requires courage and vulnerability, but in the community formed, this became possible. 

We met like-minded colleagues, and those with different ideas from our own, which deepened our perspectives. We were able to think and be active in embodied, emotional and spiritual ways. This reminds us that we are vulnerable embodied beings, and helps us to embrace that. We realised that we are already part of the ESER community of practice, and that this opens up opportunities for collaboration on future ESE research and beyond.

A group of people sitting at a restaurant table

Image Description: Group of participants sitting at a long table having dinner in a former slaughterhouse now restaurant ‘Fettschmelze’. Credit: Olivia Wohlfart.

Concluding thoughts

To build on this young ESE PhD network formed in four days, we created an online group to keep in touch. The idea of writing and sharing our collective experiences emerged. Putting our thoughts into words – together – has not only helped make our reflections more concrete but has also been a way for us to nurture the connections formed in Karlsruhe. Education is so much more than measurable, tangible ‘outputs’. We didn’t leave the Seasonal School having ticked the boxes of certain learning outcomes. Rather, the process became part of us, and we bring it with us on our evolving paths. We reflect whether the experience will continue to influence us as researchers, educators, and citizens, and if so – how?

The Seasonal School shaped our identity as researchers through place-based, embodied and collective experiences. Being part of a supportive ECR community helped us realise that through collaboration, we can better negotiate the unknown future, whether this relates to our PhD journeys, or sustainability issues generally. 

We hope that our reflections inspire future ECRs to experience Seasonal Schools and highlight the enormous value in organising in-person events which bring ECRs from diverse countries, disciplines and backgrounds together.

Key Messages

  • Sharing our ECR experience, we highlight the value of participating in in-person opportunities to find community and engage in exchange.
  • Embodied experiences relating with people and place are fundamental to Environmental and Sustainability Education.
  • Our reflections exemplify the possibility of transformative learning experiences in academia.
  • Environmental and Sustainability Education is more than measurable outcomes.
Authors

Authors

Penelope Williams, University of Bristol, UK https://orcid.org/0009-0002-0511-400X 

Julia Römer, Glasgow School of Art, UK https://orcid.org/0009-0000-5986-8478 

Julia Skilton, University of Edinburgh, UK https://orcid.org/0009-0002-0292-244X 

Caroline Kocel, Anglia Ruskin University, UK https://orcid.org/0009-0004-0740-7783 

Emma Heikkilä, University of Helsinki, Finland https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4422-575X 

Eleftheria Iakovidou, University of Gloucestershire, UK https://orcid.org/0009-0006-1699-6123

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