The special issue, “Meeting Global Challenges through Families and Community Environmental and Sustainability Education: Generating Action Competence” aims to discover and address ways of meeting global educational and political challenges of sustainable futures from the perspective of families and community involvement. With contributions from multiple disciplinary and multidisciplinary fields it is organised around four thematic areas. Namely, Education for Empowering Communities for Change through Climate and Cultural Heritage; Families and Communities Educating for Sustainable Futures; Interdisciplinary Approaches to Education for Building Resilience in the face of Environmental Complexity and Uncertainty; and Integrating Methodologies for Researching and Developing Action Competence for Environmental and Community Sustainability through Education.

This study examines the role of families in preserving cultural identity and moral values amid globalisation, employing a mixed-methods approach, the research highlights how cultural identity and moral values can instil environmental responsibility and help generations to embrace the principle of sustainability. A survey with 208 respondents and 13 in-depth interviews were conducted in the community of the UAE Higher Education, in the United Arab Emirates. The key findings reveal that families remain the cornerstone of preserving values and cultural identity by promoting environmental responsibility. However, globalisation, particularly through social media and globalised education, threatens familial cohesion. Furthermore, the study highlights the duality of globalisation as both a disruptor and a potential enabler of hybrid cultural frameworks, calling for policy interventions to regulate digital content and promote sustainability, environmental responsibility and cultural awareness, while emphasising collaborative efforts across families, educators and policymakers. Through bridging the empirical gaps, this research offers actionable insights for sustaining cultural resilience in an interconnected world.

This article examines the growing importance of cultural studies in supporting the increasing development of socio-cultural awareness among students in the higher education sector in the United Arab Emirates. It adopts a descriptive quantitative methodology, which involves conducting two questionnaires. They involved 11 instructors teaching cultural studies and 85 students attending their curricula. A random sampling technique was used in this study, where all instructors and students participated equally. Main findings indicated that 85% of instructors agreed that cultural studies play a significant role in promoting socio-cultural awareness among students. Additionally, the students’ questionnaire highlighted how they perceive cultural studies depending on their ability to foster, appreciate, and understand the value of coexistence, and the role of cultural studies in shaping their communicative and life skills. Finally, the study concludes that the need for the development of cultural studies courses is essential, aiming at adopting more effective strategies that promote students’ awareness in relation to future challenges.

This paper employs autoethnography and poetic inquiry to examine how childhood experiences along the west coast of India were entangled with early understandings of environmental education. Drawing on memories of growing up in a rural region, it traces everyday intra-actions with land, sea, plants and community practices to illustrate how environmental awareness emerges through relational, place-based learning/unlearning rather than through universalized frameworks. By weaving poetic inquiry and becoming-with literature, the article disrupts linear and Western epistemologies of research and learning. The article unfolds through two interwoven processes: first, a reflexive re-turn to childhood memories through poems that foreground relational encounters with landscapes and more-than-human beings; and second, becoming-with literature by attending to scholarship on local grassroots mo(v)ements in the Vasai–Virar region. Drawing on Barad’s (2006) notion of diffraction, the paper attends to how experiences, memories and texts intra-act to produce complex, entangled sticky webs of relations. This article argues that environmental education can benefit from recognizing situated, relational and place-based ways of knowing. In doing so, it contributes to conversations on decolonizing research practices and (re)thinking how environmental education is understood, narrated and enacted within educational contexts.

This study investigates how rural women’s leadership, grounded in traditional knowledge and daily ecological practices, contributes to environmental education and strengthens both family and community sustainability within the emerging model of rural tourism in Morocco. The research is framed by international environmental commitments, notably the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which emphasise the value of local communities in preserving natural resources and transmitting ecological knowledge. The central question examines the extent to which rural women, through their leadership and embodied knowledge, foster environmental learning and reinforce the socio-ecological resilience of households and communities. The study mobilises theoretical approaches from environmental education, experiential and social learning and socio-ecological systems theory to analyse the interplay between knowledge transfer, community engagement and biodiversity protection. Methodologically, the research adopts a qualitative design based on semi-structured interviews, participant observation and thematic analysis supported by NVivo software. Conducted in the Taounate region, the study targets women participating in rural ecotourism initiatives. Findings reveal that women act as key agents of informal environmental education, ensuring the transmission of traditional knowledge, promoting sustainable practices and enhancing collective ecological awareness. Their leadership reinforces natural resource conservation and contributes to the long-term sustainability of families and local communities while aligning local practices with global environmental commitments positioning them as essential actors in bridging local practices with global environmental sustainability agendas.

Climate change is threatening humanity’s existence. Youth have the potential and capability to contribute to tackling climate change. The current study aims to examine how school and family environmental education can enhance environmental knowledge, willingness to act, and pro-environmental behaviours among children and young people. The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was utilised on a nationally representative dataset of 2069 Vietnamese primary, secondary, and high school students. The analysis suggests that school- and family-based environmental education is beneficial for improving students’ environmental knowledge and willingness to take environmental action. Notably, the effect of school education is more substantial for cultivating environmental knowledge, whereas family education has a stronger impact on raising students’ willingness to act. Students with better environmental knowledge are more likely to engage in pro-environmental behaviours only when they are willing to act. If students are unwilling, higher environmental knowledge is negatively associated with pro-environmental behaviour. Building on these findings, we advocate for coordinated educational efforts between schools and families to strengthen students’ environmental knowledge, pro-environmental intentions, and behaviours. Furthermore, we emphasise the need for Vietnam’s education system to gradually shift away from didactic, top-down methods toward more experiential, interdisciplinary, and student-centred approaches that support transformative environmental learning and nurture an eco-surplus culture.

Global environmental crises, including climate change, biodiversity loss and resource depletion disproportionately affect communities in the Global South, where environmental vulnerability intersects with social and cultural inequalities. In rural North Sindh, Pakistan, these pressures shape everyday livelihoods and community practices through which environmental knowledge is transmitted across generations. Yet formal environmental education often overlooks these informal learning spaces. This study examines how family and community-based environmental and sustainability education cultivates action competence by integrating knowledge, motivation and action skills in a non-Western agrarian context. Guided by the Action Competence Approach as a theoretical and conceptual framework, the research employed a convergent parallel mixed-methods design within participatory action research. Data from 120 participants in Sukkur and Shikarpur were collected through surveys, interviews, focus groups and workshops. Findings show moderate-to-high action competence (M = 3.82/5), with strong environmental motivation and knowledge fostered through intergenerational storytelling, while action skills remain constrained by infrastructural and rural–urban disparities.

This study examines how Moroccan households mobilize intergenerational solidarity during recurring economic shocks (COVID-19 and inflation) and argues that family life constitutes a key site of informal Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE), where everyday routines cultivate learning about resource management, care and collective problem-solving. Addressing a gap in ESE/ESD research on crisis-time family learning, we analyse how informal support both enables and constrains sustainability-oriented action competence beyond schooling. The study adopts a qualitative design combining 65 semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observations and household document analysis across 28 urban and rural families (Fès–Meknès region). Data were analysed through a grounded theory approach and interpreted using an integrated lens of family resilience, capability theory, gender analysis and action competence (critical understanding, participatory/practical skills and individual/collective efficacy). Findings reveal three dominant solidarity configurations: (1) extended parental support to adult children, (2) reciprocal cohabitation shaped by gendered expectations and (3) remittance transfers from young migrants to older relatives. These mechanisms function as informal pedagogies of sustainability (repair–reuse routines, budgeting trade-offs, neighbourhood mutual-aid governance) that strengthen household resilience, yet also generate emotional fatigue, uneven caregiving burdens and gendered inequalities. We show how solidarity operates as both social protection and a pathway for uneven capability conversion, along gender lines. The paper concludes with implications for ESE/ESD actors and policy makers to support family-based learning ecologies while advancing care justice and equitable role redistribution. We propose “intergenerational solidarity resilience” as a concept for analysing how informal solidarities generate – and unevenly distribute – capabilities for sustainability-oriented action.

This study examines how climate change education (CCE) initiatives in Philippine basic education shape learners’ climate-related knowledge, awareness, behaviours, and perceptions of environmental well-being through the interconnected influences of families, schools, and communities. While many CCE initiatives focus on school-based knowledge and awareness, less attention has been given to how environmental practices are sustained across everyday socioecological contexts. Guided by action competence, intergenerational learning, and socioecological perspectives, the study integrates a systematic review of 109 Department of Education (DepEd) and government issuances with key informant interviews involving teachers and school-level programme implementers. Findings show that DepEd initiatives – such as YES-O, WASH programmes, and school-based greening activities – serve as critical entry points for environmental engagement but do not consistently lead to sustained behavioural change. The continuity of environmental practices depends on the degree of alignment across school, home, and community systems. Inconsistent family routines, limited local government unit (LGU) support, infrastructural constraints, and programme discontinuities weaken learners’ capacity to internalise environmental practices. Conversely, experiential learning, family modelling, lived experiences of climate risks, and active community participation strengthen children’s action competence and resilience. The study advances a socioecological alignment framework that conceptualises CCE as a relational and multi-level process shaped by structural, cultural, and institutional conditions. It argues that strengthening intergenerational learning, community engagement, and governance continuity is essential for cultivating sustained climate action. These insights offer implications for rethinking climate education in the Philippines and other climate-vulnerable and resource-constrained contexts.

Education policy is always at risk of working at cross-purposes toward education goals. Using a meta-ethnographic methodology and Massey’s geometry of space theory, the present article addresses this in relation to a particular policy realisation problem of teaching for sustainability in schools in depopulated rural areas with identified population challenges. Specific attention has gone to research addressing the enacted curriculum and teachers’ experiences of working with sustainability goals. The results highlight features for goal realisation such as the presence of and attention to rural natural and cultural environmental heritage, having local access and giving curriculum attention to local employment and sustainable vocations and professions, and having community support from the local community and engagement of the school in the community. Working against sustainability were global epistemic rural marginalisation, performative curriculum relations, market competition and competitive exclusions from market participation, tepid community involvement in schools, and socially isolated schools insulated from the local community.

Despite increased awareness and policy support, numerous rural individuals in India continue to struggle with the adoption of ecologically sustainable practices. This study examines the impact of village leaders’ emotional intelligence (EI) on promoting community-focused environmental education and enhancing action competence for sustainable rural development. A comparative case study including twelve villages – six high-performing and six underperforming – was conducted using leader self-assessments, community questionnaires, and field observations. The findings indicate that villages led by individuals with elevatedEI excel in water conservation, waste management, community engagement, and the development of sustainable infrastructure. These leaders exhibit heightened motivation, empathy, and social acumen, facilitating collaboration and participatory governance. The research highlights the importance of emotionally intelligent leadership in linking environmental consciousness with sustainable community practices.

The growing emphasis on socially responsible science education has intensified calls to integrate socioscientific issues (SSIs) into classroom practice. However, in many Global South contexts, environmental issues remain depoliticised and disconnected from students’ lived realities. This study examines how middle-school science teachers from agrarian communities in Panipat, Haryana (India) engage with the SSI of stubble burning while navigating their dual roles as educators and community stakeholders. Using a reflexive qualitative case study design, the study draws on semi-structured interviews with eight teachers, supported by classroom observations and contextual fieldnotes. Findings reveal a persistent disjunction between curricular representations and lived experience. While textbooks frame stubble burning in abstract and moralised terms, teachers interpret it as a complex issue shaped by economic constraints, policy pressures, and community practices. Classroom engagement remains constrained by time, curriculum demands, and socio-cultural sensitivities, resulting in intermittent but meaningful efforts to connect scientific concepts with local realities. Teachers’ identities as members of agrarian communities both enable empathetic, context-sensitive interpretations and constrain explicit critical engagement. The study argues for science education that is place-based, politically informed, and responsive to lived realities, offering empirical insights for reimagining SSI pedagogy in agrarian Global South contexts.

This study examines the evolution of inequalities of opportunity in school access and educational attainment in Morocco between 1998 and 2014. It analyses how individual, household and parental circumstances shape children’s educational trajectories using data from the ENNVM 1998–1999 and RGPH 2014. Two econometric approaches are applied: a probit model to estimate school enrolment and a right-censored ordered probit model to assess attainment levels. Focusing on children aged 12–19, predicted probabilities are used to identify the most and least advantaged profiles. The results show that children from advantaged backgrounds are significantly more likely to enrol and progress, while disadvantaged children face higher risks of non-enrolment and early dropout. Although disparities have slightly declined, they remain substantial. These findings highlight persistent opportunity gaps and the need for targeted, equity-oriented policies. Beyond socio-economic implications, educational inequality also affects environmental education and sustainability learning in Morocco. Unequal access to education may limit environmental literacy, climate awareness and the capacity of vulnerable populations to engage in sustainable practices, thereby constraining progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 4.7.

This study offers a framework-based analysis of climate change education (CCE) in both national school and university curricula of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It aims to assess the extent to which climate-related topics are embedded across disciplines and to explore the methods used to deliver them using Education for Sustainable Development and climate literacy frameworks. Through an analytical coding framework, a qualitative content analysis of course descriptions, syllabi, academic programmes, lab activities and course projects and/or research components is performed to assess climate change-related initiatives of UAE’s national school and major universities in terms of presence, depth, pedagogy, interdisciplinary integration and competency development climate content. The findings reveal that while several UAE institutions have begun incorporating sustainability and environmental themes, comprehensive coverage of CCE remains inconsistent and is often confined to some grades and STEM subjects, such as environmental science or engineering, only. Moreover, pedagogical approaches vary significantly, with limited application of contextual, interdisciplinary, experiential and action-oriented learning models in both school and university levels. In addition, the research identifies challenges to integrating climate change content within higher education and the national school curricula, leading to find a structural gap between national policy ambitions and curriculum implementation and highlighting the need for a uniform, competency-based national framework for climate education. This study provides a foundational insight of how UAE universities and the national school curriculum currently address CCE and offers a basis for future recommendations to policymakers, curriculum developers and educators aiming at enhancing curriculum design and teaching practices, transitioning from awareness to action.

In response to New South Wales’ target of eliminating Food Organics and Garden Organics (FOGO) waste to landfill by 2,050, this study investigates how environmental education shapes residents’ awareness and waste-sorting behaviours in multi-unit dwellings (MUDs) across Greater Western Sydney. Adopting an exploratory mixed-methods approach – integrating surveys, bin audits, interviews, and infrastructure assessments – the research reveals persistent knowledge gaps and structural constraints, particularly among culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) households. Guided by the Action Competence Framework (ACF), the findings underscore that effective FOGO participation is not driven by infrastructure alone. Rather, it depends on inclusive, participatory, and culturally responsive education that fosters understanding, builds confidence, and strengthens a sense of shared responsibility. Intergenerational learning emerges as a critical pathway, where everyday household interactions enable behavioural shifts and help reduce contamination at the source. While limited by a small sample size (n = 33) and its exploratory scope, the study makes a meaningful contribution to environmental education scholarship by extending the application of the ACF to informal residential settings. It also offers practical insights for local governments, highlighting the need to embed community-based learning strategies that can drive sustained engagement and support long-term sustainability outcomes in high-density urban environments.

Insects are increasingly used in environmental education (EE) due to their high diversity, ecological relevance, and presence in urban environments. This study evaluates the use of insects as a pedagogical tool by implementing formal and non-formal EE activities with secondary students living in areas with a high incidence of vector-borne diseases, on the coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. A total of 118 students participated in theoretical, fieldwork, and laboratory activities, as well as a public outreach event (“Entomo-Expo”). Pre- and post-workshop questionnaires were used to assess changes in knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes. At the end of the workshop, students identified 11 insect orders. They communicated their knowledge using scientific terminology, and negative reactions toward insects decreased, particularly in reports on killing behaviour, while responses associated with observation and the release of insects increased. Participants also recognised key ecological roles of insects, especially pollination. These results are associated with improvements in students’ conceptual understanding and more positive attitudes towards insects following participation in the programme. However, given the pre–post-design without a control group, these findings should be interpreted as changes over time rather than causal effects. To address the persistence of negative behaviours in older students, EE should employ both formal and non-formal teaching strategies to support a sense of responsibility and encourage a cognitive shift toward sustainable development.