Abstract
Whole-institution approaches (WIA) have become a promising instrument promoting holistic implementation of sustainability in the global discourse on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Yet, the literature often presents idealized models of the ‘sustainable institution’ that may be difficult for institutions to translate into practice. This article reviews the literature on whole-school and WIA to sustainability learnings and practices across all levels of education in order to identify recurring elements that support institutional transformation. The literature review was conducted in 2024–2025 to inform the development of a UNESCO guidance tool on the WIA. The review identifies 14 components that frequently appear as areas of action within WIAs, including leadership, curriculum, pedagogy, governance, institutional culture and community engagement. The article conceptualizes these elements as flexible ‘building blocks’ that institutions can pick and choose to design their version of the WIA, according to the institutional and local context. This component-based perspective moves away from the understanding of the WIA as an ideal state of an institution and aims to support new forms of engagement with the WIA, inform policy dialogues and contribute to further research and institutional practice on sustainability transformation in education systems.
Keywords
Introduction
In 2024, through the Transforming Futures: Enhancing Practice for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) for 2030 Through Action Research (2024–2026; UNESCO, n.d.), UNESCO commissioned a publication titled Driving Sustainability Transformation Through the Whole Institution (UNESCO, in press). The publication was to be developed in the framework of the UNESCO ESD for 2030 Roadmap (UNESCO, 2020) and was part of a series of three guidance tools, with the other themes being sustainability competencies and learning assessment.
Preliminary versions of the three global guidance tools were tested for clarity and applicability during a 10-month action research phase and are expected to be published as revised versions by UNESCO in late 2026. The revised guidance tools incorporated practical feedback, and local and cultural expertise from education officers, researchers, teachers and other practitioners in 10 countries. In total, 41 institutions (schools, higher education, other) from the following countries were included in UNESCO-led action research in 2025: Brazil, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Germany, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, Romania and Slovenia. Two global research meetings, held in Paris (France) in March 2025 and in Bucharest (Romania) in January 2026, provided further opportunities to consult with the action research network. These meetings helped to refine the guidance tools from the perspective of diverse stakeholders, integrate good-practice stories emerging from the action research and validate the content as understandable and useful from educator and practitioner standpoints.
At the outset of the project, and as a foundation to the guidance tool on the whole-institution approach (WIA) in 2024, UNESCO requested a broad literature review that would go beyond a standardized search of purely academic literature but would make special efforts to address perspectives from the Global South and include under-represented voices where possible. While the guidance tools were to be written in a language that would be accessible to readers without academic training and to those speaking English as a second language, the tools were not to include a technical review of the literature and only a minimum of academic references.
Following a preliminary review of articles and examining visuals of the WIA, it was clear that much of the WIA literature presented an idealized vision of a ‘sustainable institution’ and then identified pillars, dimensions or domains through which this ideal vision could be achieved (Holst, 2022; Torsdottir et al., 2024). While these models had been useful for raising awareness for the WIA, they were potentially exclusive in those cases where institutions did not identify with the portrayed institutional vision or felt discouraged by the gap between the ideal and the current state. Therefore, the authors of the WIA guidance tool took a different approach towards addressing the WIA to ESD: They identified recurring elements that consistently appeared across the literature as relevant for advancing ESD. Derived from a systematic synthesis of research, these elements were understood as potential leverage points to make the WIA come to life in an institution.
With this aim in mind, this article makes three contributions. First, it gives a brief overview of the literature covering the WIA or the whole-school approach (WSA; further included when referring to the WIA) across all levels of education. Second, without presenting another idealized version or a fixed state of the WIA, the article considers the idea of various WIA compositions and provides three common perspectives on the WIA that may serve as entry points for implementation. Third, it identifies patterns from the literature on recurring elements. These components identified in the analysis are not presented as universal or linear pathways towards a predefined ideal, but as flexible ‘building blocks’ that institutions may pick and choose based on their specific situation and context. This new way of presenting the WIA is intended to inform policy dialogues, future research and institutional practice in an effort to reach (new) stakeholders and engage them with the WIA to ESD.
Literature Review Design
The literature review aimed to capture a broad body of scholarship relevant to the WIA with a focus on highlighting a diversity of voices. The global guidance tool was to suit a global community and be adaptable to all regions of the world while being grounded in UNESCO’s understanding of ESD as outlined in the ESD for 2030 Roadmap. The review was to consider grey publications, that is, literature referring to information and research materials that are produced outside of traditional academic or commercial publishing channels and often very practitioner-oriented. Publications were included in the review if they explicitly engaged with ESD, UNESCO or themes of sustainability in relation to institutional change, organizational processes or system-level transformation. Studies that addressed sustainability solely at the level of individual student behaviour or teaching interventions were not included.
The initial desk search covered a timeframe from the mid-1990s, following ESD’s introduction to the academic community through its adoption in the first-ever UN action plan for sustainable development, titled Agenda 21 (United Nations, 1992), through to September 2024, when the first draft of the WIA guidance tool was submitted. Further publications with direct references to ESD and the WIA were continuously added until March 2026, when the final draft of the publication was submitted to UNESCO. This larger timeframe allowed the authors to follow both conceptual developments of the WIA and shifts in how institutional change for sustainability is considered relevant and how that is addressed in education.
Initial keywords for a database search on Google Scholar and the ERIC database were: whole-school approach/whole-institution approach, sustainability/sustainable development, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), holistic implementation/infusion, school, university and transformation. These keywords were used individually and in combination. The search considered publications in English, French, German and Spanish.
Additional input for the literature was received by conducting a global online consultation through a survey in June–July 2024. The purpose of this survey was to inform this new WIA publication on relevant literature and to gather information on good practices and challenges related to implementing the WIA in primary, secondary and higher education institutions that could serve as practical examples. The aim was to ensure that the upcoming publication was tailored to the needs of various educational institutions and to provide practical tools for and encouraging stories on implementing WIA to ESD. In addition to the broader public consultation, the authors reached out to selected researchers who had published on the WIA to receive further literature recommendations. Finally, an invitation to provide further sources was extended to the Global Advisory Group of the UNESCO Transforming Futures Project (UNESCO, n.d.).
A total of 128 publications were identified, of which 60 were academic peer-reviewed sources, and 68 were classified as grey literature. Following the removal of ineligible publications after an initial screening based on existing references to ESD in UNESCO’s understanding, as well as their relevance to the WIA concept, a total of 90 publications were considered for the writing of the preliminary version of the guidance tool, in particular to identify the recurring components, the ‘building blocks’ of the WIA. In early 2026, WIA-relevant publications from 2025 were added to the original list following another literature scan. For the final version of the guidance tool, 124 references, including 74 academic, 36 grey and 14 additional web-based sources, were directly cited.
The review included the WIA as it can take place at all levels of learning—from early childhood education to primary, secondary and tertiary education, including training and lifelong learning in the community. Exploring the culture(s) of sustainability in higher education, Holst et al. (2022) had recently conducted a comprehensive literature review. In terms of subjects or disciplines, the review drew on research from education (policy), sustainability and environmental studies, higher education studies and other policy-oriented scholarship related to sustainable development and institutional transformation. Lastly, the identification of components was developed deductively during the literature review process. The identified ‘building blocks’ are considered as a non-exhaustive list and represent a balance between the number of possible components versus their potential effectiveness, both individually and collectively, in advancing the WIA.
Findings
A Brief Overview of the WIA in the Literature
WIAs to sustainability have become increasingly prominent in UNESCO publications, academic literature and practice. A WIA refers to ‘involving the entire institution and all departments or units, its staff and its students working together to create a sustainable institution, making it a microcosm of a sustainable society by practising what it teaches’ (UNESCO, 2018).
The language of ‘whole-of’ stems from health policies and is rooted in systems thinking and integrated, holistic perspectives on change, and appears across education discourse in multiple constellations, including educating the whole child, whole-class or whole-school approaches, whole-of-institution, whole-of-system, whole-of-government and whole-of-society frameworks (Kohl et al., 2021). Within the field of ESD, which is highly influenced by the elevated shepherding role of UNESCO, early conceptual foundations for such holistic WIA thinking can be traced to Edgar Morin’s work on complexity, commissioned by UNESCO (Morin, 1999). This emphasis on complexity and interconnectedness influenced the UNESCO ESD discourse early on and provides an important philosophical underpinning for the WIA.
Since the UN Decade of ESD (2005–2014), calls for holistic implementation of ESD have grown. Early policy documents stressed that ESD should not be treated as a single subject or discipline, but as an inter- and transdisciplinary orientation relevant across the curriculum (UNESCO, 2005). From 2009 onwards, international declarations explicitly called for extending ESD beyond teaching and learning to encompass governance, operations, leadership and institutional culture (UNESCO, 2009, 2014a). The Global Action Programme on ESD (2015–2019), and since 2020 the ESD for 2030 Roadmap, have further positioned the WIA as a priority strategy for transforming learning environments (UNESCO, 2014b, 2020).
Despite this sustained policy emphasis, a global study conducted in 2021 suggests that WSA and WIA are still adopted only to a limited extent worldwide, although teachers want them to enable more involvement with schools and communities in teaching ESD (UNESCO, 2021a). This raises the following question: What does transformation through a WIA to sustainability mean in practice?
Understanding the WIA to ESD requires grounding the discussion in the broader vision of ESD. ESD is anchored in the understanding of sustainable development from the Brundtland Report, which emphasizes humanity’s responsibility to meet present needs without compromising the opportunities of future generations (United Nations, 1987). Today, ESD is framed by UNESCO as follows:
ESD empowers learners with knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to take informed decisions and make responsible actions for environmental integrity, economic viability and a just society empowering people of all genders, for present and future generations, while respecting cultural diversity. ESD is a lifelong learning process and an integral part of quality education that enhances cognitive, social and emotional and behavioural dimensions of learning. It is holistic and transformational and encompasses learning content and outcomes, pedagogy and the learning environment itself. ESD is recognized as a key enabler of all SDGs and achieves its purpose by transforming society. (UNESCO, 2020, p. 8)
Following the literature review, the most important message is not about the WIA; it is about ESD: In the WIA to ESD, ESD is not to be seen as a single discipline within the curriculum but as holistic, inter- or transdisciplinary. ESD is relevant for the whole curriculum and beyond, for all operations and daily life within an educational institution. ESD is not learning ‘about’ sustainable development but ‘for’ sustainable development (United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, 1996). Yet, the purpose of a WIA is not ESD itself, but sustainability; ESD functions as an approach for aligning all learning and institutional processes, practices and culture towards the objective of sustainability.
Consequently, the WIA is a reflective tool for sustainability transformation that supports ongoing learning, reflection and improvement. It is considered a key strategy to support scaling up and mainstreaming ESD implementation (UNESCO, 2017). Learners are encouraged to act responsibly for sustainability as they understand and appreciate the interconnectedness of this world, including their intergenerational responsibility (United Nations, 1987). Moving beyond teaching about sustainability, a WIA seeks to create coherence between what learners are taught in all disciplines and what they experience in their daily lives. The priority of sustainability in teaching and learning is reflected in other aspects, such as governance, operations, decision-making, relationships and community engagement, allowing learners to ‘live what they learn and learn what they live’ (UNESCO, 2016). In this way, ESD empowers learners to develop knowledge and skills in order to make informed decisions for their own lives in consideration of their impact on society as a whole (UNESCO, 2020). This leads to the following definition of the WIA to ESD (UNESCO, in press) that was established for the guidance tool from the literature and validated within the action research network during a meeting in Bucharest (Romania) in January 2026:
A whole-institution approach to Education for Sustainable Development is a form of reflective institutional learning in which an education organisation continually re-aligns its teaching, research, governance, operations and stakeholder relationships in response to sustainability challenges, so that a culture of change enables sustainability transformation across the whole institution, within the community and the local ecosystem.
In simple words, one could say: ‘A WIA to ESD means everyone in the school thinks about and works together to make sustainability part of everyday learning, decision-making, operations, and community engagement’.
Recent discourse within UNESCO’s Greening Education Partnership uses the term ‘greening’ when infusing sustainability in education systems. While this terminology risks being interpreted as simplistic environmental action, UNESCO-related initiatives emphasize greening as addressing all three dimensions of sustainability, based on the broader understanding of ESD (UNESCO, 2024; UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2017).
Moving from an Ideal WIA to Highlighting Diversity Through Considering Compositions of the WIA
Building on the understanding of not wanting to present another idealized version of the WIA to be pursued in a linear fashion, this new approach recognizes that every learning institution is unique. The authors considered a rather playful approach that recognizes that there is no one-size-fits-all WIA. Yet, the WIA was intended to promote holistic, participatory and co-engaged action to drive change to better comprehend and act for sustainability (Mathie & Wals, 2022). Each institution operates within specific socio-economic conditions, governance structures, cultural contexts and educational landscapes that determine if and what change is possible and how it unfolds (Mathie, 2024). The surrounding circumstances would also influence how the WIA looks in each setting (UNESCO, 2024). WIAs can therefore be understood as flexible configurations of interrelated components that are assembled, prioritized and sequenced differently depending on vision and context. There is, going against earlier WIA presentations or visualizations, no specific ideal or fixed state to be reached. Consequently, compositions of the WIA can look different in each setting (Figure 1).
Embracing Different Perspectives on the WIA
In the same way that there is no single version of a WIA, there is no single pathway for introducing a WIA. Institutions typically enter the process through different starting points, depending on their context and on who is initiating the conversation and leading the implementation. Three common entry points can be observed: top-down, bottom-up and lateral approaches (Figure 2). In practice, most institutions combine all three elements:
Different Perspectives on the WIA (IAU, 2024b).
The WIA will look differently according to the local context, capacity, and timeline. Adopting the approach does not necessitate following a certain model, structure, or all components simultaneously. As institutions evolve, components can be added as they best fit, like a building block.
Top-Down: WIA as a Strategic and Visionary Process
A WIA may begin with institutional leadership integrating sustainability into strategic planning, governance structures or institutional policies. This approach provides direction, aligning sustainability with broader institutional priorities, such as curriculum reform, campus operations or community engagement (IAU, 2024c). Strategic moments such as leadership transitions, accreditation cycles or curriculum reviews often provide opportunities to embed ESD more systematically.
Bottom-up: WIA Driven by a Caring Community
In many cases, change begins with educators, students or staff who initiate sustainability activities within their immediate areas of practice. These initiatives often grow from a shared commitment to and concern for sustainability and can gradually expand across departments or programmes. Research suggests that decentralized initiatives by educators play an important role in adapting sustainability concepts to disciplinary contexts and everyday teaching practices (Robinson et al., 2023).
Lateral: WIA Through Institutional Processes
The third perspective focuses on integrating sustainability into existing institutional processes. Core activities such as curriculum planning, teaching, assessment, research and community engagement can serve as entry points, supported by operational functions including campus management, procurement, digital infrastructure and student services. For example, initiatives related to sustainable procurement (Filho et al., 2019) or smart campus management and digital sustainability (Kratzert & Salmen, 2024) illustrate how operational practices can reinforce learning and research activities.
The 14 Core Components
This last section will get to the core of the WIA—the ‘building blocks’. The 14 components (Figure 3) identified through the literature review are neither hierarchical nor linear and should not be understood as stages or steps. Instead, they are interrelated, and institutions can pick and choose in different ways. Further components can be added if needed. This component logic shifts attention away from a deficit orientation towards creativity of envisioning a context-specific vision of sustainability within one’s institution.
Leadership
The UNESCO ESD for 2030 Roadmap identifies leaders of learning institutions as central actors in transforming learning environments (UNESCO, 2020). Transformation and change require leadership. With that in mind, a WIA is a fundamental leadership challenge. Institutional leaders play a key role in generating commitment, mobilizing resources and legitimizing change (Forssten Seiser et al., 2022; Müller et al., 2020). While individual educators can contribute, their scope for action is often limited by curriculum or discipline and broader policy contexts (Wals et al., 2024). The initiative for and continuity of a WIA therefore depend on leadership articulating a clear rationale, signalling institutional priority and outlining pathways forward (Willard, 2009). At the same time, leadership within a WIA is not limited to formal positions but can also emerge from individuals committed to sustainability, guided by shared values, systems thinking and collaboration (Hopkins et al., 2024).
Curriculum
Curriculum is widely recognized as a central entry point for ESD, as it influences which forms of knowledge, values and perspectives are addressed. Much of the literature, therefore, emphasizes the importance of integrating sustainability across subjects and disciplines while also linking global sustainability challenges to local contexts (UNESCO, 2017). However, one’s knowledge on climate change and environmental issues does not directly correlate with or create actions that are more sustainably focused (Hanisch & Eirdosch, 2023; Sobe, 2025; UNESCO, 2021b). Where appropriate, revising the curriculum must consider a decolonizing lens to knowledge and ways of knowing (Zandvliet et al., 2025).
Pedagogy
Pedagogical approaches that teach sustainability themes in a culturally appropriate and relevant manner emphasize participation, experiential learning and critical reflection (Sterling, 2011). Good pedagogy allows learners to make connections between theory and practice (McMillin & Dyball, 2009). The literature highlights the need to address cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioural dimensions of learning, particularly in light of the gap between sustainability knowledge and action (Hörsch et al., 2023). Pedagogy is the key connector between learning input and learner outcome. At the same time, the literature addresses that pedagogical innovation is limited when institutional conditions, such as workload models or assessment regimes, remain unchanged (Kensler & Uline, 2017).
Assessment
Assessment remains one of the most frequently identified gaps in WIAs. Although developing sustainability competencies is a central objective of ESD, assessing values, ethical reasoning, systems thinking and long-term behavioural change remains difficult (Fischer et al., 2025). Conventional assessment systems tend to prioritize easily measurable cognitive outcomes and reinforce disciplinary structures, which can limit the institutional legitimacy of ESD (Sterling, 2011).
Research
Especially in higher education contexts, research plays a critical role in shaping institutional priorities and resource allocation. UNESCO has long recognized the role of research in ESD (UNESCO, 2012). The literature frames research both as a driver of sustainability-oriented innovation and as a domain requiring transformation itself. Participatory and community-engaged research approaches are frequently highlighted as aligned with ESD principles (Wals et al., 2024).
Community Engagement
An institution never exists in a vacuum. Education extends beyond schooling as a lifelong learning process embedded in wider social contexts. Engaging beyond the institution to include the community is therefore integral to a holistic curriculum, as localizing learning requires attention to the needs of both learners and their communities (UNESCO, 2018). Within a WIA, ESD connects learning with societal needs and enables students to explore practical improvements through experience (Mogren et al., 2018). Initial engagement often centres on learning ‘about’, ‘in’ and ‘from’ the community through outdoor and place-based education. These practices across formal and informal settings usually involve limited collaboration but remain important, as place-based learning can foster emotional connections to nature through lived experiences, identified as critical for sustainability education in an increasingly digital age (Wals & Benavot, 2017). Moving towards learning ‘with’ and ‘for’ the community requires deeper relationships and sustained collaboration. Communities must be recognized not only as learning contexts but also as partners and sources of knowledge and shared resources (UNESCO, 2022). Such engagement strengthens the role of educational institutions in fostering civic responsibility and socially engaged learning (Merino et al., 2025).
Institutional Culture
In a WIA, the concept of culture goes beyond a singular exceptional or unique aspect, such as a culture of reading or inclusivity, and rather aims to embed sustainability into all aspects of the institutional life, beginning with underpinning values and exemplifying through practice (Holst et al., 2024). Values play an important role in embedding aspects of sustainability, such as caring, engaging and initiating sustainable practices within the ethos of the school or institution. Both tangible and intangible aspects comprise the culture, as it is shaped by shared values, knowledge and institutional practices that align with and reinforce what learners are taught and experience in practice (Martinsone et al., 2023). The tangible aspect of institutional culture includes policies and practices which demonstrate that sustainability is valued, for example, energy and water conservation or distinct measures to address inclusivity and ensure equity are taught, practiced, monitored, with data shared and success celebrated (Kohl et al., 2021). Intangible aspects emerge when such practices become embedded as everyday norms within the institution. Overt actions at the organizational level to align the institution with sustainability encourage and allow learners to develop the necessary knowledge, skills and values necessary for citizens with sustainable orientations and lifestyles (SUSEDI, 2022). Yet, cultural change is slow and contested, particularly where roles or power relations may not be fully clear to all stakeholders involved (Gericke et al., 2024).
People
People are central to the success of any WIA. Seeking, preparing, engaging and nurturing people at all levels of WIA implementation are crucial factors for success. Individual and collective professional development is an essential element in preparing people for the changes in roles and expectations that result from the process of moving towards the WIA. The literature highlights the importance of professional learning, capacity development and recognition across all staff groups, including non-academic personnel (Mogren et al., 2018). A group of actors who do not receive as much attention but are equally important is the non-academic staff and those with technical, administrative or managerial positions. These actors are critical to the functioning of an educational institution, and although they may be willing to engage with the ideas and practices of sustainability, they are often neglected and lack confidence in their level of knowledge (Bacelar-Nicolau et al., 2023).
Partnerships and Networks
Partnerships and networks extend institutional capacity and enable learning across contexts (Marinoni & Pina Cardona, 2024). Regional, national and global networks are valued for sharing knowledge, building legitimacy and supporting collective action (UNESCO, 2020).
Governance
Governance structures determine how decisions are made, how responsibilities are distributed and whose voices are included in institutional change processes. Participatory and integrative governance arrangements are highlighted as enabling conditions for WIAs, particularly where they support coordination across departments and stakeholder groups (Holst, 2022). At the same time, governance is frequently identified as a hurdle, especially in decentralized systems where sustainability responsibilities are distributed across different groups of stakeholders (OECD, 2016).
Campus and School Operations
Aligning infrastructure, procurement and resource management with sustainability objectives is seen as reinforcing learning through lived experience. When students see sustainability concepts reflected in campus or school operations, their understanding deepens through everyday practice (DVV International, 2024). Institutional alignment often begins with efficient buildings (UNESCO, 2025), energy, water and waste reduction, as these can generate savings that support other sustainability initiatives. Then, impact can be balanced to include other dimensions, such as when going paperless takes into account the digital footprint, accessibility, or social appropriateness of services. Making sustainability visible in institutional operations reinforces its relevance and strengthens links to classroom learning.
Student Services
Student agency is repeatedly emphasized as a driver of institutional change when going beyond symbolic participation (UNESCO, 2022). Quality student services offer opportunities to explore forms of collective student agency and active participation in the governing bodies, and remain in place in light of student turnover rates. Research suggests that the effectiveness of such an approach depends less on formal organizational structures and more on an enabling organizational culture (Seifert et al., 2011). Through participatory service design and representation, student services can foster democratic engagement and collective responsibility, reinforcing student agency within the institution.
Finances
Financial structures and resource allocation mechanisms play a powerful but often under-analysed role in enabling or constraining institutional change (Filho et al., 2019). The literature highlights the importance of aligning budgets, funding incentives and procurement practices with sustainability objectives (Jiménez & Herrera, 2022). While a small budget can go far through the contributions of community members (Plevyak, 2022), too many sustainability initiatives are too often expected to be cost-neutral or are project-based (UNESCO, 2014a). With that, long-term planning and maintaining change is a challenge.
Internal and External Communications
It is important to facilitate communication among participants in the WIA to create and negotiate a common vision (Gericke et al., 2024), as this plays a key role in building shared understanding, acceptance, alignment and legitimacy for the WIA, both within the institution and beyond. Communication experts, either external, part of the faculty or community volunteers, are helpful in preparing communication materials of various types, be they print, visual, social media or events, and may support marketing efforts in student recruitment, (research) grants, and rankings. In contrast, learning from communication efforts can inform teaching and research.
Other Possible Components
The importance of these 14 components may vary from school to school, region to region and country to country. There may be other aspects that are relevant to the WIA. What will also vary is the influence that one may have in driving change regarding each component, for example, little influence on the building infrastructure, yet considerable opportunity in the selection of global partners, little influence on the allocation of public funding, yet academic freedom in selecting research opportunities and so on. The composition of components and their prioritized alignment will form the action areas of each WIA and create a unique composition and approach. Lastly, for each component, monitoring and evaluation are to be discussed as mechanisms for institutional learning. Reflective and formative approaches will support continuous improvement and adaptation (UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2017).
In summary, the literature confirms that WIAs have become increasingly prominent across education to advance sustainability within institutions of learning. The 14 components represent recurring areas of action that appear across policy documents, empirical studies and practice-oriented guidance without being prescriptive or exhaustive. In this sense, the WIA can be understood as an ongoing process of institutional learning in which teaching and learning, operations, and relationships are gradually aligned with broader sustainability objectives.
Limitations and Future Research
A limitation of this review relates to the language in which it was conducted and the regional biases present in the available literature, which may still under-represent knowledge and practices documented in other languages, formats, or contexts. Further empirical research is needed to examine how institutions work with different combinations of WIA components and how these evolve over time. Such research could also compare this rather flexible and context-sensitive model of the WIA with the fixed, idealistic WIA models that appear in literature and practice to date. Initial feedback from the action research on this new WIA to ESD suggests that using components as reflective entry points was very positively received by stakeholders and supported institutional dialogue and active involvement of all stakeholder groups.
Conclusion and Ways Forward
This article grounds the WIA to ESD in the literature and offers a conceptual foundation for the new UNESCO guidance tool ‘Driving Sustainability Transformation Through the Whole Institution’ (UNESCO, in press), which aims to encourage more educational institutions to explore and engage with the approach. As literature and practice continue to evolve, this review provides another synthesis of existing knowledge and encourages institutions to think about the WIA in new ways. Further research is needed to strengthen the evidence base for the WIA. WIAs offer a promising opportunity to create learning environments in which learners can understand and experience sustainability in their local (and cultural) context and in relation to global opportunities and challenges. But they cannot offer a simple quick fix for sustainability transformation, just as education alone cannot shift societies towards more sustainable lifestyles and behaviours. Nevertheless, the action research has already demonstrated the added value of having the conversation about the WIA. So, if thoughtfully designed, adapted and implemented, the WIA can support meaningful institutional reflection, collaboration and learning. When this process later generates measurable changes that advance sustainable futures, institutional learning can turn theoretical reflection into meaningful action.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This literature review was made possible through funding from UNESCO, with support from the people of Japan, and was conducted within the framework of the ESD for 2030 Roadmap as part of a series of guidance tools titled Enhancing ESD Practice. The authors thank UNESCO, the advisory board of the publication series, the global team of action researchers, teachers, school coordinators and representatives from National Commissions for UNESCO for sharing their expertise to inform the literature on the WIA to ESD. The authors also extend their thanks to the respondents who participated in the global survey on relevant literature conducted by the International Association of Universities (IAU), as well as to all those who participated in the consultations with the IAU Higher Education and Research for Sustainable Development Cluster.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This literature review was made possible through funding from UNESCO.