The ongoing climate crisis requires a far-reaching socio-ecological transformation in all areas of society (WBGU). In recent years, real-world laboratories have increasingly been established to develop and test solutions to pressing real-world problems. Real-world laboratories provide a permanent infrastructure for transdisciplinary and transformative research that is characterized by cooperation between scientific and non-scientific actors as well as research, educational and practical objectives. The central element of the real-world laboratories are real-life experiments in which the actors cooperatively initiate and evaluate change towards sustainable development.

The cumulative doctorate refers in part to the #climatechallenge (#cc) ESD format funded by the National Climate Initiative and used throughout Germany, which provides the real-world research context for the project.

The dissertation project focuses on the question of whether and how the transformative engagement and key competencies for sustainable development of future pioneers of change (change agents) can be strengthened through learning and teaching formats with self-experiments and real-world experiments. The following thematic focuses will be addressed:

• Interactions between individual and collective climate protection and transformation approaches, differentiated according to the concepts of the socio-ecological footprint and handprint.
• Development and critical reflection of a monitoring and evaluation concept for the nationwide climate education project #climatechallenge.
• Application of transformative learning and teaching formats in education for sustainable development in part-time university teaching as a contribution to cultural change in companies (change management) and explorative impact evaluation.

Tel.: +49 721 608-24189
E-mail