UNESCO Chair Lecture Series: Jorrit Holst

The UNESCO Chair Lecture Series commenced on 17 December 2024 with a lecture by Jorrit Holst from the Institute for Future at Freie Universität Berlin. 

In his talk, “Whole-School Sustainability: Concept, Effectiveness, and Transformation Pathways,” Jorrit shared insights from his recent research on sustainability in education. He highlighted the Whole-School Approach (WSA) as a framework for turning schools into experiential spaces for sustainability learning, political literacy, and active citizenship that could empower both learners and educators to address collective sustainability challenges.

Jorrit also introduced the WSA-Scale, a tool to assess the extent to which sustainability is experienced by learners and educators across all areas of action of whole-school sustainability in everyday life.

• Prioritising sustainability as a core feature of quality education at all levels, from policy to practice.

• Shifting from sustainability as an ‘add-on’ to sustainability as the structural default mode – viewing it as an ‘epochal key challenge’ that requires systemic, transformative changes.

• Fostering democratic participation and citizenship literacy through experiential learning and collaborative action.

We sincerely thank Jorrit Holst for this inspiring opening lecture and his contribution to advancing whole-institution approaches in sustainability education.