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SDSN USA Holds US Summit on Transformative Education

By Sonja Neve

On February 23 - 25, 2023, SDSN USA, Mission 4.7, and the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University convened leaders in education from across the country for the United States Summit on Transformative Education. The event had over 400 attendees and presenters, many of whom attended sessions across all three days of the summit.


Inspired by UNESCO’s Transformative Education Summit and building off of the community of educational stakeholders from SDSN USA’s Mission 4.7 Community of Practice (CoP) and previous years of the New Jersey Climate Change Education Summit, the event showcased solutions, innovations, and best practices in education for sustainable development from across the US. The event, which covered a broad range of topics from an array of voices in the educational field, left the audience with hope and inspiration despite the level of the challenge faced in the US. After the meeting, attendees shared a variety of ways they hoped to continue the work of transforming education, including bringing learnings back to their classrooms and further engaging youth in ESD.


The three day Summit explored a range of transformative education topics, and resulted in key takeaways including:

  • Understanding global trends on Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship education;
  • The need for radical collaboration across sectors (including with community, companies, and civic actors);
  • The opportunity for a reimagining and disruption of education to prioritize solutions;
  • The role of history - specifically regarding equity, justice and inclusion- in providing context for challenges today;
  • Shifting our understanding of education to include formal/informal education and lifelong learning;
  • Combining local action and systemic change and recognizing small-scale efforts can make a big impact;
  • The importance of balancing eco-anxiety and future-phobia with agency for change;
  • The importance of systems thinking;
  • The value of hearing from the young people on their research trajectories on various sustainability pathways;
  • Mindfulness and investment in sustaining our inner environment; and
  • The power and deep knowledge of the education community in the United States to thoughtfully envision and embark upon systemic change for good.


The summit opened with remarks from Hilligje van’t Land, Secretary General of the International Association of Universities (IAU) on the role higher education institutions play in sustainable development. Higher education institutions have expanded their efforts on sustainable development, with pursuits such as global citizenship education and using the SDGs as a framework to work across disciplines and departments. 

Other sessions on Day 1 included a panel on the futures of sustainability education through the lens of civic engagement, culture and design thinking; a keynote address on the turning points of education transformation: mobilizing the power of science, art, and imagination for ecological justice; an interview on "Representations of Humans, Climate Change, and Environmental Degradation in School Textbooks in Ghana and Malawi"; a panel on Ethics in Action for Sustainable Development to consider theological, philosophical and ethical perspectives for grounding sustainable development efforts; and a roundtable discussion on learning in the age of climate uncertainty. 


The sessions included discussions of innovative practices, research presentations, and spoken word poetry. Attendees participated in breakout sessions on a range of topics including ESD & Sustainable Lifestyles; Climate Justice; Human Rights/Human Rights Education; and Mindfulness. Each day of programming integrated guided meditation, highlighting the importance of mindfulness and investing in inner sustainability, a practice one attendee, Barnaby Spring, defined as an “ally for helping each of us address the human rights struggle that is going on in between our ears, in our hearts and bodies”.


In her closing remarks, Dr. Wendy Purcell of Rutgers University reminded the attendees that all the research, ideas, and challenges discussed throughout the day are grounded in a shared sense of purpose. As she said in her keynote, “quality education is about human rights” and leaving no one behind. She shared her manifesto of change, which helps define a new social contract for education, including the need for disruption and collaboration in transforming education.

Day 2 of the summit was well framed by opening remarks from Noah Sobe and Aaron Benavot on "Transforming towards utopia: Redefining and repurposing change in global education". Presented by Sobe and Benavot, and reinforced throughout the day by other presentations and discussions, transformative education brings a call to action to a shared objective. As stated in the Education First initiative by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon in 2012, “It is not enough for education to produce people that can read and write… but transforming the way people think and act”. In line with the 2030 Agenda, education needs to not just respond to the current challenges, but also actively change the world. 

The second day of the summit continued to inspire with impactful sessions on a range of topics including a panel on sustainability education: non-formal and in-formal education; a book launch discussion on Educating for the Anthropocene; a presentation of new trends in monitoring SDG 4.7; a keynote titled “No justice, no sustainability; No sustainability, no justice"; and a roundtable on making life-long learning possible through linkages between k-12 and beyond through climate education and education for sustainable development. 


Ann Nielsen, Director of the Office of Global Engagement in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University, summarized the day in her closing remarks. Ann asserted that transforming education will require unlearning root metaphors and reconfiguring pedagogies.

Day 3, focused on youth engagement in education, featured youth voices from the US and beyond. In the keynote address for the final day of the summit, Jahnavi Bhatt with The Winston School invited her 6th and 8th grade students to share poems and essays about the environment. The students expressed their fear and anger about climate change and environmental destruction, as well as productive actions they could take, including repurposing/thrifting clothes, picking up trash, and promoting renewable energy. They also discussed the importance of education in making change through environmental action.

Other young people contributed to the discussion throughout day 3, including a student-moderated session on Indigenous rights and environmental justice; a panel on sustainable fashion from students at Hopewell Valley Central High School; an announcement of the Millburn Ed Foundation Environmental Challenge Winners; and an interview with a climate education teacher.


A complete list of the sessions and their speakers can be found in the summit schedule. All session recordings can be found in the US Summit on Transformative Education Playlist on the SDSN USA YouTube Channel. 

The summit received over 100 submissions for sessions during the open call for proposals. Though not all could be included, the proposals illustrate a wealth of knowledge and experience in transformative education within the Mission 4.7 Community. In order to share these projects and resources, SDSN USA hosts many of these submissions in a Mission 4.7 Transformative Education Resource Library on their website. We invite you to explore these resources and thank submitters, participants, and attendees for their time, effort, and engagement.


Our work together does not end here! To continue to build community, momentum, and action towards transformative education in the United States, the Mission 4.7 CoP will hold workshop and dialogue sessions featuring community members in the coming months, leading up to COP28 in November. More details on future events will be available soon at www.sdsnusa.org/events.


The event would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of the Summit’s Organizing Committee.