Education for sustainability and the affective learning domain

Education for sustainability scholarship argues that sustainability competence is more than cognitive domain learning that is traditionally (over) focused on reason, knowledge application and testing. Affective domain is missing from the education curricula in general (Sowel, 2005, Dernikos et al, 2020), and in Higher Education in Sustainability (HES) (Shepard, 2008). Yet, “it is possible to construct an argument that the essence of education for sustainability is a quest for affective outcomes” (Shepard, 2008).

For example, there is a link between personal values and sustainability performance (Potocan 2021), and emotional intelligence has been seen to be “the foundation of a more cooperative and compassionate [sustainable] society” (Estrada, Rodriguez, Moliner, 2021).