This workshop is grounded in an integrative approach that combines social-psychological insights (e.g., self-efficacy, belonging), inclusive perspectives from special education, and participatory teaching practices.

Participants will explore the question, "Why do people engage?" This inquiry delves into the social and psychological underpinnings that shape human behavior. The workshop will examine the possibility of incorporating Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) into teaching practices. Subsequent issues to be addressed include transformative teaching, equity and participation, and inclusive pedagogies in sustainability contexts.

In the course of the workshop, the role of universities as agents of societal transformation will be emphasized. Such transformation is exemplified by student engagement, co-design of learning environments, interdisciplinary collaboration, and global and cross-cultural dimensions of sustainability education, for instance.

Please find here the available Call for Proposals with further information.

This workshop is organized by:

Prof. Daniela Niesta-Kayser is a professor of special education in the Department of Education and Psychology at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses, among other things, on educational inequalities, participation, and processes of migration and integration. More recently, she has expanded her work into the field of sustainability and energy through the award-winning FUturist project “Rainwater Heroes: Cooperative Learning Strategies for Water Conservation and Urban Tree Support.”This project connects social-psychological research on self-efficacy, participation, and collaborative learning with Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), and is currently being further developed in terms of both scientific depth and practical transfer. Her contributions to sustainability and transformation research are marked by a focus on social embeddedness, collective efficacy, and institutional conditions, building on her extensive expertise in social inequality, inclusion, and cooperative learning environments. Her work aims to help people better understand how institutions change by using a "whole institution" approach.

JunProf. Dr. Luisa Girnus, since December 2024, she has been a junior professor of political education, education for sustainable development (ESD), and transformative education at the Otto-Suhr-Institute for Political Science. There, she conducts research on issues at the intersection of political education with ESD and transformative education, learning processes in social value discourses, and language-sensitive and gender-equitable teaching of social sciences. She publishes on political education in the context of technology and digitality, as well as empirical teaching and learning research in the social sciences. As one of the initiators of the working group on political education and gender within the Society for Political Didactics and Political Youth and Adult Education, she advocates for stronger gender and intersectional perspectives in political didactics. She is active in the speakers' circle of the Political Science and Political Education Section of the German Association for Political Science (DVPW). She is also involved in the state executive committee of the German Association for Political Education (DVPB) Brandenburg and as an assessor on the federal executive committee of the DVPB. Since 2018, she has been part of the editorial team of the journal POLIS.

*To participate in this workshop, please register via our conference registration platform.