Empowering Educators: Building Competencies for Sustainable Futures

Résumé

This article builds on a keynote lecture by Professor Marco Rieckmann and situates Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as a transformative framework for empowering learners to contribute to sustainable futures. It argues that achieving a “safe and just space for humanity” requires a profound shift in educational paradigms—from knowledge transmission to competence-oriented, action-based learning. The article outlines core sustainability competencies, reframes ESD as citizenship education that strengthens critical political agency, and highlights the importance of action-oriented pedagogies and the Whole-Institution Approach (WIA). Special attention is given to educator competencies, particularly within the “A Rounder Sense of Purpose” (RSP) framework, and to current research initiatives aimed at assessing action competence. The article concludes that empowering educators—conceptually, pedagogically, and institutionally—is the cornerstone of transformative learning and essential for embedding sustainability across educational fields, including physical education.