A systematic review of self-assessment scales on action competence in environmental and sustainability education: current limitations and development opportunities

Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) has the potential to empower learners to become agents of democratic transformation toward sustainability. Part of this lies in ESE's potential to foster action competence (AC) among learners. To capture this potential, ESE should be informed by feedback from adequate assessment instruments. The most common type is self-assessment scales, enabling large-scale statistical analyses. Drawing on theories of social change and democracy, we argue that self-assessment scales should: (a) be grounded in, and capable of assessing, AC for both individually driven and systemically oriented actions for social change; (b) distinguish between individual and collective AC; and (c) be based on a solid theoretical foundation regarding what supports and hinders actions for social change. Through a systematic review we identify validated scales assessing AC for sustainability and environmentally friendly actions, pinpoint gaps in terms of the a, b, and c listed above, and discuss ways to reduce these gaps through avenues for further instrument development and research.