Pedagogical strategies and practices in environmental and sustainability education in vocational education and training: an integrative review (1999–2024)

Environmental and sustainability education (ESE) within vocational education and training (VET) is rapidly evolving in both research and practice, driven by growing recognition of skilled workers’ roles and responsibilities in advancing a ‘green transition’ of society. To better understand how ESE programs and initiatives are pursued and practiced in different VET contexts, we undertook an integrative review of empirical studies of ESE in VET. Focusing on a 25-year span (1999–2024), we surfaced 26 studies that met our inclusion criteria. In this paper, we explore differences and similarities in conceptions of pedagogical strategies and practices examined in the sample studies. Despite variations, we found that many of the studies highlight that ESE in VET should be conceived as a transformational process. We argue that future research could benefit from further unpacking this conception by engaging directly with existing theories on transformative learning (TL) and thus explore in greater detail how concepts and mechanisms explicated in such theories can be used in research on ESE in VET.