Closing Thoughts: The Role of Educator Competences for ESD in Turbulent Times

This chapter takes stock of some of the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic and relates these back to the core messages of this book. One ‘take away’ from this discussion is the possibility of rapid change, which echoes what is needed for education for sustainable development (ESD), another is the fact that people frequently claim to have learned things from the pandemic that reinforce their pre-existing beliefs, showing a tension between evolution and conservation. The chapter closes by identifying three inter-related challenges confronting the effort to integrate ESD into mainstream formal education: firstly, educators need competences that extend beyond the attributes required of those in mainstream settings today; secondly there will need to be a shift in priorities across institutions to support this. Finally, we need to achieve the political will, at the level of education policymakers, to enshrine contributing to the imperative of securing a socially just and ecologically sustainable future within the core purposes of education.