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The purpose of this paper is to share and analyse the methodology and findings of the 2016 Green Economy Learning Assessment South Africa, including learning needs identified with reference to the competency framings of Scharmer (2009) and Wiek et al. (2011); and implications for university and work-based sustainability education, broadly conceptualised in a just transitions framework.

The assessment was conducted using desktop policy reviews and an audit of sustainability education providers, online questionnaires to sector experts, focus groups and interviews with practitioners driving green economy initiatives.

Policy monitoring and evaluation, and education for sustainable development, emerged as key change levers across nine priority areas including agriculture, energy, natural resources, water, transport and infrastructure. The competencies required to drive sustainability in these areas were clustered as technical, relational and transformational competencies for: making the case; integrated sustainable development planning; strategic adaptive management and expansive learning; working across organisational units; working across knowledge fields; capacity and organisational development; and principle-based leadership. Practitioners develop such competencies through formal higher education and short courses plus course-activated networks and “on the job” learning.

The paper adds to the literature on sustainability competencies and raises questions regarding forms of hybrid learning suitable for developing technical, relational and transformative competencies.

A national learning needs assessment methodology and tools for customised organisational learning needs assessments are shared.

The assessment methodology is novel in this context and the workplace-based tools, original.

Introduces the special issue on “Stories of transformation” in higher education (HE). Highlights that transformation in HE involves multi‐disciplinary and applied orientations to curriculum change, which break down the modernist dichotomy of theory and practice. Also highlights the significance of change processes that are value‐based and require the involvement of committed individuals and groups that are prepared to engage the often rhetorical nature of declarations and institutionalized commitments to sustainable development. Also highlights the absence of theorizing about change and action in institutional contexts amongst academics involved in transformation towards sustainable development in HE institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse 12 assessment tools of sustainability in universities and develop the structure and the contents of these tools to be more intelligible. The configuration of the tools reviewed highlight indicators that clearly communicate only the essential information. This paper explores how the theoretical concept of a sustainable university is translated into more measurable variables to support practitioners and academics in assessing sustainability in universities.

The main method for this paper was a desk study approach, which incorporated reviewing research papers, graduate theses, academic books, network platforms and websites.

The tools reviewed share similar traits in terms of criteria, sub-criteria and indicators. Five benchmarks are essential for a holistic framework: management; academia; environment; engagement and innovation.

This research can not only be used to improve existing assessment tools but also as a means to develop new tools tailored for universities that face a variety of challenges and lack the ability to measure their sustainability policies.

Making higher education more sustainable through all the criteria mentioned influences students, as well as staff, to maintain a culture of sustainability.

This study contributes to the literature by simplifying and detailing the structure and contents of the tools in a way which indicators are shown, giving a full picture of these tools to enable universities to be more aware of the sustainability issues that affect them.

The educational community – particularly higher education – should contribute to the new generation’s understanding of what sustainability entails. To do this, teachers must be aware of the need for education for sustainability. However, little is known about how university teachers understand or represent sustainability. This study aims to bridge the gap identified in the literature concerning university teachers’ representation of sustainability.

A total of 403 teachers from the University of the Basque Country participated in the study through a free association exercise based on the grid elaboration method.

In general terms, teachers are aware of the three dimensions that constitute sustainability, but differences were found in the way sustainability was represented depending on several factors such as the teaching field, previous knowledge of the 2030 Agenda and gender. Despite awareness of the need to incorporate sustainability, there was also reticence toward the way in which sustainability is being addressed in higher education. Those results were discussed considering the previous literature on sustainability.

The results allow the authors to conclude that knowledge of the 2030 Agenda leads teachers to have a more complete representation and greater recognition of sustainability. Thus, it would be necessary for universities to offer more training to teachers to promote a holistic understanding of sustainability and facilitate its incorporation into teaching.

The use of this method made it possible to collect, in a less biased and much more direct way, the teachers’ voices, to know the type of representation (holistic) or partial (only one of its dimensions: environmental, economic or social) that they have of sustainability, and to check whether their representation was linked to specific factors.