Sustainability competencies in teacher education: Making teacher education count in everyday school practice

The need for sustainable development and societal transformation is gaining more and more relevance. Social learning processes will be needed to contribute to real change which is why the 2030 Agenda (UN, 2015) and the Global Action Programme pick up on the importance of education and establish it as one of their priorities. Strengthening the competencies of multipliers is one goal on the way to ensuring inclusive, quality education for all and to empowering everyone to support sustainable development. Thus, teacher education has to be taken into account - implementing education for sustainable development will depend not least on competent and committed teachers who are motivated to act as change agents. This goes hand in hand with the question of what knowledge and abilities teachers should acquire in order to be active change agents and what is needed to make the development of appropriate competencies possible. But how can teacher education respond to this challenge? To answer this question, the authors introduce and analyze the design of an open learning environment based on the idea of living laboratories. In this setting students work on sustainability issues together with experienced practice partners from school in a transdisciplinary manner on real-world projects. As a result not only does learning occur among students but actual projects are carried out, changing educational practice as well contributing to societal transformation.