How to Use the Framework?
A professional guide for understanding what learners should achieve, what they should be learning, how sustainability can be taught effectively, where meaningful learning happens best, and how the Network of Green Learning Ambassadors brings the framework to life.
Page Overview
Learning
Teaching
Ambassadors
What do we want learners to achieve?
Learning outcomes within LEAF are structured across three interdependent and developmentally progressive dimensions: cognitive mastery, socio-emotional orientation, and green behavioural agency.
Cognitive Mastery
Cognitive mastery provides the analytical foundation—enabling learners to interpret the interdependence of environmental systems, social arrangements, and economic models.
Socio-emotional Orientation
Socio-emotional orientation shapes ethical positioning—fostering reflexivity, responsibility, and normative engagement with sustainability challenges.
Green Behavioural Agency
Green behavioural agency represents demonstrable performance—the capacity to translate understanding and values into collaborative, context-sensitive action.
These dimensions are not sequential stages but dynamically reinforcing processes. As illustrated in Figure 4, analytical understanding informs ethical positioning; ethical positioning motivates action; and action, through reflection and feedback, deepens understanding. Sustainability competence thus evolves through iterative cycles of interpretation, responsibility, and practice.
This architecture aligns with major international competence frameworks. It mirrors the structure of the European sustainability competence framework (GreenComp), particularly its integration of complexity, values, and action (European Commission. Joint Research Centre, 2022); resonates with EntreComp’s emphasis on initiative and value creation; and reflects UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development model, which integrates cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioural dimensions (UNESCO, 2024b). Alignment with SDG Target 4.7 and indicator 4.7.1 further strengthens policy coherence and enables measurable curriculum integration.
Understanding the interdependence of these domains grounds cognitive mastery. Interpreting their justice implications shapes socio-emotional orientation. Designing interventions that are environmentally sound, socially inclusive, and economically viable demonstrates green behavioural agency. As depicted in Figure 5, learning outcomes are shaped by sustainability domains—but they are also intended to shape them in return. Through sustained action, graduates contribute to environmental integrity, social justice, and sustainable economic transformation.
The purpose of sustainability education, therefore, is to produce systemically responsible actors capable of navigating and transforming complex socio-ecologicaleconomic realities. Framed as lifelong learning, sustainability competence remains an evolving capability. Graduates should leave education equipped to update their knowledge, engage critically with emerging evidence, manage uncertainty, and participate constructively in shaping long-term societal transformation.
What should they be learning?
The LEAF supports the idea that a green curriculum is defined by a coherent architecture of sustainability knowledge organized around core metaconcepts that allow learners to interpret, question, and transform the world.
Drawing on UNESCO’s Greening Curriculum Guidance (UNESCO, 2024b) and the European sustainability competence framework (GreenComp) (European Commission. Joint Research Centre, 2022), the LEAF framework organizes sustainability content around six interrelated metaconcepts. These metaconcepts function as integrative lenses that cut across disciplines, professional fields, and societal sectors: systems and interdependence; justice, equity, and responsibility; futures and anticipation; sustainable production and consumption systems; human-nature relationships; agency, governance, and collective action; spiral and developmental structure.
Rather than adding “green topics,” institutions are invited to align disciplinary content with these structuring ideas.
Learners should understand that ecological, economic, technological, and social systems are deeply interconnected. The systems and interdependence metaconcept establishes a foundational shift in how sustainability is approached within higher education. It reframes disciplinary knowledge by situating it within dynamic, interconnected socio-ecological systems, where environmental, economic, technological, and social processes are co-constitutive rather than separable domains. This perspective challenges reductionist approaches and requires learners to engage with non-linear dynamics, feedback mechanisms, and cross-scale interactions that characterise contemporary sustainability challenges.
From a curriculum perspective, this metaconcept functions as an organising principle. It enables disciplines to reinterpret their core concepts through a systems lens: engineers analyse lifecycle impacts and infrastructure interdependencies, economists examine externalities and systemic risk, while health sciences connect environmental conditions to population health outcomes. Such integration moves sustainability from peripheral topics to embedded analytical frameworks within disciplinary practice.
This orientation is closely aligned with the systems thinking competence in European Commission Joint Research Centre’s GreenComp framework, which emphasises understanding complexity, interconnections, and unintended consequences as essential to sustainability literacy. It also reflects UNESCO’s guidance on greening curricula, which highlights complexity literacy as a prerequisite for informed decision-making in uncertain and rapidly changing contexts.
Importantly, systems thinking is cognitive and also epistemological and practical. It requires learners to navigate uncertainty, recognise limits to prediction, and engage with tradeoffs across sectors and scales. As such, it supports the development of more reflexive and adaptive forms of professional practice, where decisions are informed by an awareness of interdependence and long-term consequences.
The justice, equity, and responsibility metaconcept foregrounds the normative and political dimensions of sustainability. It recognises that environmental challenges are inseparable from questions of power, distribution, and rights, and that sustainability transitions inevitably produce uneven impacts across social groups, regions, and generations. As such, this metaconcept shifts the focus from technical problem-solving alone to the ethical frameworks and governance choices that shape how sustainability is defined and pursued.
Within curricula, this perspective enables disciplines to interrogate their own roles in reproducing or addressing inequality. Legal studies examine regulatory justice and rightsbased approaches to environmental governance; business disciplines engage with corporate responsibility and accountability; social sciences analyse structural inequalities and socioeconomic drivers of vulnerability; and STEM fields increasingly confront questions of ethical design, technological bias, and societal impact. This cross-disciplinary engagement positions sustainability as a site of contested values rather than a neutral domain.
The emphasis on intergenerational equity, North–South dynamics, and distributional impacts further highlights that sustainability involves negotiating trade-offs and responsibilities across time and space. Learners are required to consider who benefits, who bears the costs, and whose voices are included or excluded in decision-making processes. This orientation supports a more critical and reflexive understanding of sustainability, particularly in the context of climate transitions that may exacerbate existing inequalities if not carefully governed.
This metaconcept aligns with the “Embodying sustainability values” competence area in the European Commission Joint Research Centre’s GreenComp framework, which emphasises fairness, responsibility, and respect for diversity as core elements of sustainability competence. It also reflects UNESCO’s emphasis on justice-driven approaches to greening curricula, where ethical reasoning and social inclusion are central to educational transformation.
The futures and anticipation metaconcept positions sustainability as an inherently forward-looking endeavour, requiring learners to engage with uncertainty, complexity, and long-term transformation. It shifts the focus from analysing present conditions to exploring possible, probable, and desirable futures, and to understanding how current decisions shape future outcomes. This perspective is particularly relevant in the context of climate change and socio-ecological transitions, where delayed impacts and irreversible thresholds demand anticipatory thinking.
Within curricula, this metaconcept introduces approaches such as scenario building, foresight methods, and transition design, enabling learners to engage with uncertainty, risk, and systemic change. Disciplines operationalise this in distinct ways: engineers model future energy and infrastructure systems, economists explore transition pathways and systemic risks, urban planners design resilient cities, and environmental scientists assess ecosystem vulnerability. At the same time, fields such as law, policy, and business engage with governance under uncertainty, regulatory design, and risk management, while design and architecture contribute through innovation in materials, systems, and future-oriented solutions.
Importantly, futures thinking extends beyond prediction. It involves the capacity to critically evaluate assumptions, imagine alternative trajectories, and engage with normative questions about desirable futures. This includes reflecting on trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation, short-term and long-term priorities, and technological and social pathways for transformation. In this sense, the metaconcept supports learners in navigating uncertainty while maintaining agency in shaping outcomes.
This approach aligns with the “Envisioning sustainable futures” competence area in the European Commission Joint Research Centre’s GreenComp framework, which emphasises imagination, strategic thinking, and anticipation as core sustainability competences. It also reflects UNESCO’s call for future-oriented curriculum reform, where learners are equipped to engage with emerging challenges and actively contribute to shaping sustainable transitions.
The sustainable production and consumption systems metaconcept directs attention to the material and economic foundations of sustainability. It requires learners to critically examine how goods, services, and resources are produced, distributed, and consumed, and how these systems can be reconfigured to operate within ecological limits. This perspective challenges dominant linear models of growth and encourages engagement with alternative paradigms such as circularity, regeneration, and post-carbon development.
Within curricula, this metaconcept enables disciplines to interrogate their contribution to production systems and their potential for transformation. Engineering and industrial fields address material efficiency, energy systems, and low-carbon infrastructure; architecture and design engage with sustainable materials and climate-responsive solutions; business and economics examine supply chains, value creation, and the implications of shifting beyond growth-oriented models. At the same time, agricultural sciences and environmental disciplines explore regenerative practices and ecosystem restoration, while social sciences consider the social dimensions of production, including labour conditions, food systems, and rural transformation.
A key dimension of this metaconcept lies in making resource flows and systemic impacts visible. Tools such as lifecycle assessment, data analytics, and supply chain mapping allow learners to understand how local practices connect to global environmental pressures. This supports a more integrated view of sustainability, where production and consumption are understood as interconnected processes with environmental, social, and economic consequences.
The emphasis on circular economy, decarbonisation, and sustainable mobility reflects broader transitions toward post-carbon and resource-efficient systems. These transitions require not only technological innovation but also organisational change, policy alignment, and shifts in consumer behaviour. As such, learners are encouraged to engage with both technical solutions and systemic transformations.
This metaconcept aligns with UNESCO’s key sustainability themes, including sustainable lifestyles, circular economy, and post-carbon development, which position production and consumption systems at the centre of curriculum reform.
The human–nature relationships metaconcept shifts the focus from understanding systems to reconsidering how humans relate to the natural world. It introduces a reflective dimension into sustainability learning, inviting learners to question dominant assumptions about nature as a resource and to explore alternative ways of knowing, valuing, and interacting with the more-than-human world.
This perspective brings together ecological knowledge with cultural, ethical, and experiential dimensions. Across disciplines, it opens space for diverse interpretations: environmental sciences examine ecosystem functions and conservation strategies, while economics engages with the valuation—and limitations—of ecosystem services. Fields such as anthropology, education, and development studies highlight the importance of plural knowledge systems, including Indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge, in shaping more relational and context-sensitive approaches to sustainability.
In applied fields, this metaconcept translates into design and practice choices. Urban planning and architecture integrate biodiversity and biophilic principles into built environments; agriculture explores biodiversity-based and regenerative practices; engineering develops green infrastructure that works with, rather than against, natural systems. At the same time, policy and legal perspectives address land rights, environmental justice, and the governance of nature-based solutions.
Beyond disciplinary applications, this metaconcept engages with questions of identity, ethics, and wellbeing. It encourages learners to reflect on their own relationship with nature, recognising that sustainability involves not only external change but also shifts in values, attitudes, and ways of being. Concepts such as ecological identity and wellbeing highlight the interdependence between human flourishing and the health of ecosystems.
This orientation aligns with the “Promoting nature” competence in the European Commission Joint Research Centre’s GreenComp framework, which emphasises care, respect, and responsibility toward the natural world. It also reflects UNESCO’s emphasis on reconnecting education with nature, recognising this as a key dimension of transformative sustainability learning.
Finally, learners must understand how change happens. The agency, governance, and collective action metaconcept brings sustainability learning into the realm of decisionmaking, power, and change processes. It focuses on how transformations are initiated, negotiated, and sustained across institutional, societal, and global levels. Understanding sustainability, in this sense, requires not only analysing systems and envisioning futures, but also engaging with the mechanisms through which change becomes possible.
Across disciplines, this metaconcept highlights the diversity of pathways through which agency is exercised. Political science and international relations examine governance architectures and global negotiations; law engages with regulatory frameworks and rights-based approaches; public administration focuses on implementation systems and policy delivery. At the same time, sociology and social sciences explore collective action, social movements, and patterns of citizen engagement, while economics addresses cooperation, incentives, and public goods.
In more applied domains, agency takes the form of leadership, participation, and organisational change. Business and management education engage with sustainable leadership and corporate transformation; communication studies explore advocacy and public engagement strategies; education itself becomes a space for fostering participatory practices and empowering learners as active contributors to change. Community development and local initiatives further illustrate how agency is distributed and enacted in context-specific ways.
This metaconcept also foregrounds the importance of collective rather than individual action. Sustainability challenges cannot be addressed through isolated efforts; they require coordinated responses across actors, sectors, and scales. Learners are therefore encouraged to understand how alliances are built, how conflicts are negotiated, and how institutional change unfolds over time.
The emphasis on governance and agency aligns with the “Acting for sustainability” competence area in the European Commission Joint Research Centre’s GreenComp framework, which highlights the capacity to engage, collaborate, and take responsibility for change. It also reflects UNESCO’s action-oriented approach to sustainability education, where learners are positioned not only as knowledge recipients but as active participants in societal transformation.
Spiral and Developmental Structure
These metaconcepts should not be treated as isolated modules. Instead, they are structured through a developmental spiral, where learning deepens and expands across stages of education.
At early stages, learners develop foundational awareness, gaining initial exposure to key sustainability concepts and recognising their relevance across contexts. At intermediate levels, these concepts are progressively integrated within disciplines, allowing learners to apply sustainability lenses to domain-specific knowledge and problem-solving. At advanced stages, learning evolves into professional application and leadership, where learners engage with real-world challenges, navigate complexity, and contribute to transformative practices within their fields.
This spiral progression ensures that sustainability is not confined to introductory courses but is revisited with increasing depth, complexity, and responsibility. It supports continuity across undergraduate, postgraduate, and lifelong learning pathways, enabling learners to move from understanding sustainability to actively shaping it in professional and societal contexts.
How can we teach most effectively?
Greening the curriculum requires more than adding new sustainability topics to existing courses. It requires rethinking how learning experiences are designed so that students develop not only knowledge about sustainability but also the ability to engage with complex societal challenges. Climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, and social inequality are interconnected problems that cannot be understood through fragmented disciplinary approaches or passive learning methods. Effective sustainability education therefore relies on pedagogical approaches that foster active participation, interdisciplinary thinking, ethical reflection, and engagement with real-world contexts.
The intersection of these dimensions generates four complementary clusters of pedagogical approaches: Hero Pedagogies, Community and Solidarity Pedagogies, Sustainable Green Pedagogies, and Technology-Enhanced Pedagogies. Each cluster represents a distinct orientation toward learning while contributing to the broader goal of transformative sustainability education.
Hero Pedagogies
Hero pedagogies therefore play a crucial role in cultivating the socio-emotional foundations of sustainability learning. They encourage learners to reflect on their own roles within social and ecological systems and to develop a sense of agency and responsibility.
These approaches frame it as a deeply human challenge that requires compassion, imagination, and moral engagement (Kukulska-Hulme et al., 2023; Motta & Bennett, 2018).
Community and Solidarity Pedagogies
While hero pedagogies focus on personal engagement, community and solidarity pedagogies expand the learning process into the broader social ecosystem in which universities operate.
Sustainability challenges are collective problems that require collaboration among multiple actors, including communities, public institutions, businesses, and civil society organizations.
Sustainable Green Pedagogies
Sustainable green pedagogies focus directly on the environmental and systemic dimensions of sustainability. They aim to develop learners’ capacity to understand complex socio-ecological systems and to design innovative responses to sustainability challenges.
These approaches emphasize interdisciplinary inquiry, systems thinking, and problemsolving.
Technology-Enhanced Pedagogies
Digital technologies provide powerful opportunities to enhance sustainability learning by enabling new forms of interaction, experimentation, and collaboration. Technologyenhanced pedagogies integrate digital tools and platforms to create dynamic learning environments that extend beyond the traditional classroom.
Simulations, virtual laboratories, digital storytelling, augmented reality or extended reality (XR) environments, and collaborative online platforms allow students to explore complex systems and scenarios that would otherwise be difficult to experience directly.
Illustrative Examples Mentioned in the Framework
Velfies—short, self-recorded video reflections—illustrate how hero pedagogies can cultivate empathy, ethical awareness, and personal engagement in sustainability and justice-oriented education (Ciolan & Manasia, 2025; Manasia et al., 2026; Sterling-Fox et al., 2020). Unlike traditional written reflection, velfies combine voice, gesture, facial expression, and spatial context, enabling learners to express their thinking in multimodal and embodied ways.
Walk & Talk initiatives illustrate how community and solidarity pedagogies connect academic learning with the lived realities of local communities. Inspired by the Jane’s Walk movement, these guided urban walks combine observation, dialogue, and community engagement to explore social and environmental challenges directly within the spaces where they unfold.
During Walk & Talk activities, students walk through neighbourhoods alongside local residents, community associations, and civic organizations. Through shared observation and conversation, participants examine issues such as gentrification, housing affordability, urban sustainability, and waste management. These encounters allow learners to understand how public policies, economic dynamics, and social practices shape everyday life in cities.
By bringing the university into dialogue with neighbourhood actors, Walk & Talk pedagogies transform the city into a living classroom. Students engage with community knowledge, learn from civic actors advocating for social and environmental justice, and reflect on how urban spaces can be designed to support inclusive and sustainable living.
The Learning Planet Youth Design Challenge illustrates how sustainable green pedagogies engage learners in designing solutions to real-world sustainability challenges. The initiative supports young people in transforming their ideas for environmental and social change into concrete projects with tangible impact.
Through design-based and challenge-driven learning, participants identify pressing sustainability issues within their communities and develop innovative responses. The programme provides mentorship, collaborative networks, and opportunities to refine project ideas while connecting learners with experts, organisations, and peers working toward sustainable development.
This pedagogical approach encourages learners to move beyond theoretical understanding toward active problem-solving and systems thinking. Thus, participants gain experience in project design, collaboration, and sustainability innovation, while reflecting on the broader social, environmental, and economic systems shaping their projects.
Escape rooms and XR experiences show how digital technologies can transform sustainability education into immersive and collaborative learning experiences. These game-based pedagogies place learners inside interactive narratives where they investigate environmental challenges, analyse complex systems, and work together to solve sustainability-related problems.
In such environments, learners do not simply acquire knowledge about sustainability but develop the capacity to think critically, collaborate effectively, and act responsibly in complex socio-ecological systems.
Where does meaningful learning happen best?
Sustainability learning emerges in connected learning environments that link knowledge, experience, and action. Climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, and social inequality unfold within complex social and ecological systems. Understanding these challenges requires learning experiences that extend beyond lecture halls and disciplinary boundaries.
Current global education debates highlight the importance of learning ecosystems—networks of institutions, communities, and digital platforms that support lifelong and collaborative learning. The Brookings Institution’s New Green Learning Agenda emphasizes that education systems must connect formal learning with community engagement, real-world problem solving, and digital collaboration in order to prepare learners for sustainability transitions.
Within the LEAF framework, meaningful green learning unfolds across four complementary environments: classrooms, communities, places, and digital spaces. Together, these environments form an integrated ecosystem that connects conceptual knowledge with lived experience and collective action.
Classrooms
Classrooms provide structured spaces for exploring sustainability concepts, analytical frameworks, and interdisciplinary perspectives. Through dialogue, inquiry, and collaborative exploration, learners develop the intellectual tools needed to understand complex socioecological systems.
Active pedagogies strengthen this role. Challenge-based learning, project-based learning, and collaborative problem solving encourage students to investigate real sustainability challenges while developing systems thinking, anticipatory thinking, and ethical reasoning.
Communities
Communities offer opportunities to connect academic learning with the social realities of sustainability transitions. Cities, neighbourhoods, civil society organizations, businesses, and public institutions all shape the contexts in which sustainability challenges unfold.
Community-engaged learning approaches—such as service learning, participatory research, living labs, and stakeholder partnerships—bring students into direct dialogue with those working on sustainability challenges.
Places
Real environments provide powerful contexts for experiential learning. Natural landscapes, urban neighbourhoods, industrial sites, and community infrastructures reveal how global sustainability challenges take shape in specific locations.
Place-based learning activities—such as fieldwork, urban observation, environmental monitoring, and site visits—allow students to investigate sustainability challenges directly within the environments where they occur.
Digital Spaces
Digital environments expand the reach of sustainability education by connecting learners with global knowledge networks, data resources, and collaborative platforms. Online tools enable students to explore complex sustainability systems through simulations, interactive datasets, and virtual collaboration.
Digital platforms also facilitate international cooperation. Students can collaborate with peers, researchers, and practitioners across institutions and regions, gaining access to diverse perspectives and experiences. These connections support interdisciplinary learning and global dialogue around sustainability challenges.
Integrated thoughtfully, digital tools enhance sustainability education by extending learning across physical and institutional boundaries while enabling new forms of experimentation and collaboration.
Learning Across People, Places, and Futures
Effective sustainability education connects people, places, and futures. Learners engage emotionally and ethically with sustainability challenges, investigate the social and ecological contexts in which these challenges emerge, and explore pathways for future transformation.
By linking classrooms, communities, places, and digital environments, higher education institutions can create dynamic learning ecosystems that connect knowledge with action. Within such ecosystems, students develop the capacity to analyze complex challenges, collaborate across sectors, and contribute to more sustainable and equitable futures.
The Living Component: Network of Green Ambassadors
The Network of Green Learning Ambassadors is the living, participatory heart of the GREEN LEAF Framework. While the Learning, Engagement, and Action pillars provide the structural foundation for greening higher education curricula, the Ambassadors bring the framework to life through continuous dialogue, experimentation, and collaboration. They ensure the LEAF remains dynamic, context-responsive, and rooted in real institutional and community practice.
Green Learning Ambassadors are students, educators, researchers, community partners, and practitioners who champion sustainability learning within their institutions and regions. They act as facilitators, connectors, innovators, and storytellers—bridging academic, civic, and professional spaces to advance meaningful climate action and curriculum transformation.
How to identify potential Green Ambassadors?
The journey towards establishing an effective Network of Green Learning Ambassadors starts with identifying the right individuals—those who are passionate about sustainability, climate action, and transforming how learning happens in higher education. Potential Green Learning Ambassadors can come from many backgrounds: students, lecturers, researchers, professional and administrative staff, and community partners. These individuals are not defined only by their formal roles, but by their desire to cultivate a culture of sustainability learning within and beyond the university.
Across Europe and globally, universities have experimented with sustainability champions, green offices, student climate leaders, and similar initiatives. Their experiences offer valuable insights into how institutions can identify and support ambassadors who can genuinely advance curriculum greening and institutional transformation.
At the heart of every effective Green Learning Ambassador lies a genuine commitment to sustainability and curriculum greening. This commitment is often visible long before any formal ambassador role exists. It can be seen in the choices people make, the questions they raise, and the ways they shape learning experiences for others.
Potential ambassadors are often already weaving sustainability into their everyday work. Educators may redesign assignments to address real-world environmental or social challenges, invite community partners into the classroom, or encourage students to reflect on the ethical dimensions of their discipline. Students may seek learning opportunities beyond their formal curriculum, participate in sustainability initiatives, or bring climate and justice perspectives into group projects and student-led activities. Professional and administrative staff may contribute by improving sustainable practices in learning environments, supporting green initiatives, or connecting institutional operations with educational goals.
What matters most is not a person’s job title or disciplinary background, but the way sustainability has become part of how they think, teach, learn, and act. Green Ambassadors frequently come from a wide range of fields, including those not traditionally associated with environmental studies. Their strength lies in their ability to make sustainability meaningful within their own context and to help others see how it connects to their studies, professions, and everyday lives.
Because this commitment grows organically from personal values and lived practice, the ambassador role feels natural rather than imposed. These individuals tend to engage with curiosity and care, sustain their involvement over time, and communicate with authenticity. Their motivation is rooted in purpose rather than obligation, which makes them trusted peers and credible facilitators of change.
In addition to demonstrated commitment to sustainability, potential Green Learning Ambassadors should show leadership potential and the capacity to positively influence others. In this context, leadership is not defined by formal authority or managerial roles, but by the ability to mobilise participation, facilitate collaboration, and sustain engagement around sustainability learning.
Such individuals are often effective communicators who can translate sustainability concepts into forms that are meaningful within specific disciplinary, professional, or community contexts. They are able to convene diverse actors, support peer learning, and encourage collective ownership of initiatives. Their leadership is typically expressed through facilitation, coordination, mentoring, and knowledge sharing rather than directive decision-making.
In educational settings, this form of distributed and relational leadership is particularly important. Curriculum greening and sustainability engagement rely on voluntary participation, trust, and peer influence. Green Ambassadors with leadership capacity help bridge institutional goals and everyday practice, enabling sustainability initiatives to scale beyond individual projects and endure over time.
In addition to commitment and leadership capacity, Green Learning Ambassadors should demonstrate relevant expertise that enables them to contribute meaningfully to sustainability learning and curriculum greening. Expertise in this context should be understood broadly and inclusively, encompassing disciplinary knowledge, pedagogical competence, practical experience, or contextual understanding related to sustainability challenges.
Potential ambassadors may possess subject-specific expertise relevant to environmental, social, economic, or technological dimensions of sustainability. This can include formal academic training, professional experience, applied research, or sustained engagement with sustainability-related practice. Equally important is pedagogical or facilitation expertise, particularly the ability to design, adapt, and support learning experiences that foster green and transformative competences.
Expertise does not need to be exhaustive or specialist in all areas of sustainability. Rather, effective Green Ambassadors typically have a solid knowledge base within their own domain and the capacity to connect this expertise to broader sustainability frameworks, such as curriculum goals, competence frameworks, or institutional priorities. Their credibility often stems from the practical application of knowledge in real educational or professional contexts.
Recognising diverse forms of expertise is essential. Educators, students, researchers, and professional staff may each contribute different but complementary knowledge and skills. By valuing disciplinary, pedagogical, and practice-based expertise, institutions can build ambassador networks that are both robust and context-sensitive, supporting meaningful and scalable curriculum greening.
A strong network of Green Learning Ambassadors should reflect diversity across disciplines, institutional roles, lived experiences, and social contexts. Diversity in this sense is a core condition for effective sustainability learning and curriculum greening. Sustainability challenges are complex, systemic, and context-dependent. Addressing them meaningfully requires the integration of multiple forms of knowledge and perspective, including scientific, social, cultural, technical, and experiential understandings. Green Ambassadors drawn from diverse academic fields, professional roles, and educational levels are better positioned to interpret sustainability in ways that are relevant across curricula and institutional settings.
Process of identification
Once the key attributes of Green Learning Ambassadors have been defined, institutions need a clear and practical process for identifying individuals who demonstrate these qualities in practice. Identification should be understood as an active and ongoing process.
Make sustainability visible and discussable
The first step is to ensure that sustainability and curriculum greening are visible priorities within the institution. This requires intentional communication and structured opportunities for engagement. Institutions should organise activities such as thematic seminars, workshops, challenge-based learning events, learning labs, and open discussions focused on sustainability, green competences, and educational transformation.
These activities serve a dual purpose: they raise awareness and create spaces where potential ambassadors naturally become visible through participation, initiative, and contribution. Individuals who consistently engage, propose ideas, facilitate discussions, or connect sustainability themes to learning and practice are strong candidates for ambassador roles.
Use informed nomination channels
In parallel with open engagement activities, institutions should work with key actors who have insight into everyday academic and educational practice. Department heads, programme coordinators, research supervisors, student representatives, sustainability officers, and community partners can be asked to nominate individuals who have demonstrated sustained commitment to sustainability or curriculum greening, leadership through facilitation or coordination, relevant disciplinary, pedagogical, or practice-based expertise, and the ability to engage diverse groups.
This step helps identify candidates whose contributions may not be highly visible at institutional level but are recognised locally within departments, programmes, or projects.
Launch an open call with clear criteria
Institutions should complement targeted identification with an open call for Green Learning Ambassadors. Open calls lower barriers to participation and allow motivated individuals to self-identify, including students, early-career educators, professional staff, or community partners who may otherwise be overlooked.
To ensure quality and alignment, the call should clearly specify the purpose of the ambassador role, the expected areas of contribution, the selection criteria, and the forms of support offered.
Applications should focus on evidence of practice, such as project involvement, teaching innovations, community engagement, or collaborative initiatives, rather than formal positions or titles.
Treat identification as iterative
Identification should not be limited to a single cohort. Institutions are encouraged to treat it as an iterative and adaptive process, periodically revisiting the pool of engaged individuals and allowing new ambassadors to emerge as sustainability initiatives evolve. This approach supports continuity, renewal, and diversity within the ambassador network, while reinforcing sustainability engagement as an integral part of institutional culture rather than a fixed programme.
Recruitment process
Once the key attributes of Green Learning Ambassadors have been defined and potential candidates identified, institutions should establish a structured and transparent recruitment process to formalise engagement. Recruitment represents a critical step in translating interest and demonstrated capacity into sustained participation, ensuring coherence between institutional sustainability objectives and individual contributions.
This phase should be conceived as a planned and inclusive process, grounded in clear criteria and communicated expectations. It serves to clarify roles, responsibilities, and support mechanisms, while fostering accountability and long-term commitment. When designed effectively, recruitment contributes to the development of a stable and diverse ambassador network capable of supporting curriculum greening and sustainability learning across institutional contexts.
Clear and shared expectations are a foundational element of the recruitment process for Green Learning Ambassadors. Establishing these expectations at an early stage supports mutual understanding between institutions and ambassadors and provides a stable basis for effective and sustained engagement.
Institutions should explicitly define the objectives of the ambassador role, the scope of activities involved, and the expected level of commitment. This includes clarifying core responsibilities, forms of participation, and anticipated contributions to sustainability learning and curriculum greening. Where appropriate, expectations should also acknowledge different institutional roles and contexts, allowing for flexibility while maintaining coherence.
Inviting applications is a central component of the recruitment process and plays a key role in ensuring openness, inclusiveness, and transparency. Well-designed invitations help translate institutional intent into active participation and enable a broad range of individuals to consider engagement as Green Learning Ambassadors.
Institutions should communicate the call for applications clearly and through multiple channels, including institutional websites, internal communication platforms, faculty and student networks, and sustainability-related events. The invitation should articulate the purpose of the ambassador initiative, outline expected roles and contributions, and indicate the forms of support and recognition available. Clear reference to selection criteria and timelines supports informed decision-making by potential applicants.
Invitations should be framed to encourage participation from diverse institutional roles and disciplinary backgrounds. Language should emphasise demonstrated engagement and motivation rather than formal status, helping to lower barriers for students, early-career educators, professional staff, and community partners. Where relevant, targeted outreach may complement open calls to ensure balanced representation across faculties, programmes, and stakeholder groups.
Evaluation and selection provide the basis for ensuring that the Green Learning Ambassador initiative is credible, balanced, and aligned with institutional objectives. This stage translates applications and nominations into informed decisions, based on clearly defined and consistently applied criteria.
Institutions should assess candidates against the attributes established in the identification phase, including commitment to sustainability, leadership potential, relevant expertise, and contribution to diversity. Evaluation processes may combine qualitative review of applications, evidence of prior engagement or practice, and, where appropriate, short interviews or conversations to clarify motivation and capacity for participation.
Selection decisions should be proportionate to the scale and scope of the initiative. Institutions may prioritise balance across disciplines, roles, and institutional units, as well as feasibility in terms of coordination and support. Transparent documentation of decisions and clear communication with applicants contribute to trust in the process and support continued engagement, including for candidates not selected in a given cycle.
Evaluation and selection should be embedded within a broader, iterative recruitment strategy. Periodic review of criteria and outcomes allows institutions to refine the process over time, ensuring continued relevance, inclusiveness, and alignment with evolving sustainability and curriculum-greening priorities.
Appointment Period and Network Enrichment
Institutions should define the appointment period for Green Learning Ambassadors. In doing so, they should take into account the need to regularly enrich and renew the ambassador network. Maintaining a dynamic and diverse group of ambassadors is essential for supporting knowledge exchange, fostering collaboration, and strengthening the overall impact of sustainability learning and curriculum greening across institutions.
Providing a Platform for Engagement
Following the selection and appointment process, Green Learning Ambassadors should be formally introduced and embedded within the institutional learning ecosystem. Providing a visible and accessible platform for engagement serves both symbolic and functional purposes.
Formal introduction recognises the role of ambassadors and signals institutional commitment to sustainability learning and curriculum greening. At the same time, it ensures that students, educators, and staff are aware of who the ambassadors are, what they do, and how they can be contacted for support, collaboration, or guidance. Clear visibility strengthens legitimacy and facilitates uptake of sustainability-related initiatives across the institution.
Institutions should therefore provide dedicated spaces—physical, digital, or hybrid—where ambassadors can interact with peers, exchange practices, and engage with wider institutional and external stakeholders. Such platforms support continuity, peer learning, and the translation of sustainability goals into everyday educational practice.
Roles and responsibilities
Green learning ambassadors are campus heroes, who promote sustainability learning through advocacy, education, support, and community-building. They connect students, faculty, staff, and community partners to turn climate action into classroom learning, everyday practices, and campus life.
Advocacy
They promote sustainability learning and climate-aware education across campus life, classroom practice, and institutional culture.
Education
Green Learning Ambassadors not only inform, but also educate their peers and staff, by sharing key concepts like systems thinking, lifecycle approaches, and climate justice.
Support
They offer hands-on help to faculty, students, and staff, bringing sustainability into lessons and projects and offering guidance on activities and assessments.
Community-building
They organise events like seminars, student showcases, green hackathons, and challenges, and help craft a shared action plan.
They can organize workshops on place-based learning, energy budgeting, lifecycle assessments, and real-world projects, and provide for their audience useful resources like guides and case studies. Building up repositories of such resources can help them stay up to date regarding local priorities and international advances on the subject.
The support role of green ambassadors consists of offering hands-on help to faculty, students, and staff, bringing sustainability into lessons and projects. They offer guidance on incorporating sustainability into courses or choosing the right activities and assessments. When needed, they can also help by pushing for resources.
Green Learning Ambassadors build a campus culture of sustainability learning by creating and sustaining communities. They organise events like seminars, student showcases, green hackathons, and challenges; set up online networks for collaboration; and help craft a shared action plan. These activities support knowledge-sharing, peer learning, and collective efforts for climate-aware education and practice.
Moreover, roles of ambassadors are flexible, they can cover multiple areas (for example, advocacy and education, or education and support, etc.), and they can rotate as needed.
And last, but not least, in order to assess their impact and improve their activities, some metrics need to be recorded and analysed: curricular integrations, number of courses influenced, events held, and evidence of practice changes.
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