Responsible AI for Sustainable Education: Bridging Innovation and the SDGs

Dear Colleagues,

In the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), education plays a central role in advancing sustainable development. At the same time, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative force reshaping educational systems, pedagogical practices, and institutional decision-making. This Special Issue focuses on the intersection of AI and sustainability in education, examining both their synergistic potential and the tensions that arise from their integration.

AI presents significant opportunities for advancing sustainability-oriented education. Machine learning–based personalized learning systems can tailor climate literacy, environmental education, and circular economy curricula to diverse learner needs, thereby enhancing engagement and learning outcomes. Big data analytics and AI-driven management systems can optimize campus resource use, improve energy efficiency, and reduce institutional carbon footprints. In addition, AI-enabled collaborative platforms can transcend geographical boundaries, promoting more equitable access to sustainability education resources across regions and contexts.

Despite these opportunities, important challenges remain. Algorithmic bias may reinforce or exacerbate existing educational inequalities, while over-reliance on digital technologies risks weakening experiential and hands-on engagement with environmental issues. Concerns related to data privacy, transparency, and governance further complicate the implementation of AI-driven educational solutions. Addressing these challenges requires critical, evidence-based, and context-sensitive research.

This Special Issue invites empirical studies, case analyses, theoretical contributions, and framework-based papers that offer actionable insights into the responsible and sustainable use of AI in education. Our aim is to advance balanced, human-centered approaches to AI-enabled sustainability education that support learners, educators, institutions, and policymakers in cultivating agents of global change.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• AI-enabled sustainability education aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals
• Personalized and adaptive learning systems for environmental and climate education
• AI-supported learning analytics for monitoring sustainability competencies and outcomes
• Ethical, transparent, and trustworthy AI in educational contexts
• Algorithmic bias, fairness, and inclusion in AI-driven educational systems
• AI for sustainable campus management and smart educational infrastructure
• Teacher professional development and institutional capacity building for AI adoption
• AI literacy and sustainability literacy as integrated educational competencies
• Policy frameworks and governance models for sustainable AI use in education
• Data privacy, security, and student trust in AI-enabled learning environments
• AI applications for sustainability education in low-resource or underserved contexts
• Human-centered and participatory approaches to AI design in education
• Comparative and cross-national studies of AI-driven sustainability initiatives in education
• Critical and interdisciplinary perspectives on AI, education, and sustainability

Submissions addressing related themes that advance theoretical understanding, methodological innovation, or practical implementation of AI-driven sustainability in education will also be considered.

Dr. Shwadhin Sharma
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• AI
• sustainability education
• personalized learning
• environmental literacy
• implementation challenges