Digital Innovation for Transformative Education and Sustainable Development

Dear Colleagues,

Digital innovation is viewed as an essential enabler for educational transformation rather than a standalone fix. Through its "Twin Transition" framework, UNESCO (2024) advocates leveraging new and emergent technologies such as AI and immersive learning to scale climate action, provided that technology is steered ethically, equitably, and purposefully toward sustainable development goals. Digital innovation can enable educational transformation, but its contribution to sustainability depends on how it is designed, implemented, and evaluated. This Special Issue focuses on the intersection of digital innovation, educational transformation, and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) to explore how digital innovation can enhance education's capacity to contribute to sustainability. This would include the potential of digital technologies and digitally supported pedagogies to:

• Develop sustainability knowledge, values, skills and competences;
• Support transformative, experiential, collaborative and learner-centred pedagogies;
• Increase access, participation, inclusion, and lifelong learning;
• Support ethical and transformative learning;
• Support educators and institutions in embedding sustainability within curricula and educational practices;
• Facilitate engagement with complex sustainability challenges through simulation, data, virtual environments, collaborative platforms, AI, etc.;
• Contribute to educational transformation aligned with the SDGs, particularly, but not exclusively, SDG.

We invite empirical, conceptual, comparative, methodological, and review studies examining the intersection of digital innovation, educational transformation, and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Key Areas of focus include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Digital and technology-enhanced pedagogies for ESD;
• AI, immersive technologies, simulations, serious games, gamification, and virtual/augmented reality in ESD;
• Digital tools for climate, environmental, social, or sustainability education;
• Development and assessment of sustainability competences through digital learning; 
• Teacher education and professional development for digitally supported ESD;
• Digital inclusion, accessibility, equity, and the digital divide in the ESD context;
• Digital citizenship and responsible use of technology;
• Institutional digital transformation for sustainable education;
• Policies and leadership supporting digital innovation and ESD;
• Assessment, measurement, and evaluation of the effectiveness or sustainability impact of digital educational interventions;
• Digital tools for critical ESD.

The purpose of the Special Issue is to:

• Provide evidence concerning whether, how and under what conditions digital innovations contribute to effective ESD.
• Strengthen the theoretical connection between the fields of digital education/digital transformation and ESD rather than treating them as separate educational agendas.
• Identify scalable pedagogical approaches, institutional practices, professional development strategies and policy conditions through which digital innovation can support education systems in responding to environmental, social and economic sustainability challenges.

A systematic review of sustainability and digital education found considerable diversity in digital educational initiatives but also showed that much of the literature concentrates on higher education and particularly on SDG 4, with much less representation of other educational levels and broader relationships among the SDGs. It also argued that research needs to move beyond simply equating digital innovation with the use of ICT.

Therefore, this Special Issue could supplement the existing literature in three important ways:

1. Move from technology use to educational transformation: Rather than asking simply whether particular technologies improve learning, the issue would examine how digital innovation changes pedagogies, curricula, learning environments, competencies, and institutional practices in ways that support sustainable development.
2. Bring together the digital and sustainability agendas: It would explicitly connect research on digital transformation with ESD, responding to the increasingly recognised need to bridge the digital and green transitions.
3. Provide stronger evidence about conditions and impacts: The literature already contains many innovative practices and case studies. The Special Issue could particularly encourage research that goes further by evaluating outcomes, effectiveness, implementation conditions, sustainability competencies, scalability, institutionalisation, and longer-term impact.

The Special Issue will bridge two rapidly developing but still insufficiently integrated fields, digital innovation in education (including AI-driven personalised learning, immersive VR/AR environments, and data-informed adaptive platforms) and Education for Sustainable Development, by examining not simply the adoption of digital technologies, but the conditions under which digital innovation can enable inclusive, transformative, and sustainable educational practices.

Dr. Chrysanthi Kadji-Beltran
Dr. Nikleia Eteokleous
Guest Editors

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-anonymized 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.

• education for sustainable development (ESD)
• digital innovation in education
• educational transformation
• technology-enhanced pedagogy
• sustainability competencies