Research
Action Competence for Sustainability
My research area is within environmental and sustainability education research.
Currently, I am working in IMP>ACT, which is a Horizon Europe project and a collaboration between seven European academic partners and five social partners. Read more about IMP>ACT. At Karlstad University, I lead the work package that focuses on the development of measurement instruments aimed at assessing what people know about different action possibilities, to what extent they believe their actions matter, and their willingness to act on issues related to sustainability and climate.
Research on young people's action competence in sustainability and climate issues has involved several international collaborations with, for example, universities in Norway and Belgium. The results of some of these collaborations are visible in the publication list along with articles that address action competence for sustainable development from previous research projects, such as a longitudinal research project funded by the Swedish Institute for Educational Research (SKOLFI) where the implementation of a whole school approach to education for sustainable development is studied in several schools in a Swedish municipality. Part of my research interest in this longitudinal project was to study how students develop their action competence for sustainable development over time. See the publication list below.
Teaching
My teaching is focused around biology and natural science courses within teacher education, as well as courses related to sustainable development and to teaching and learning for sustainability.
Selected publications
Torsdottir, A. E., Olsson, D., & Sinnes, A. T. (2024). Developing action competence for sustainability–Do school experiences in influencing society matter?. Global Environmental Change, 86, 102840.
Torsdottir, A. E., Sinnes, A. T., Olsson, D., & Wals, A. (2024). Do students have anything to say? Student participation in a whole school approach to sustainability. Environmental Education Research, 30(4), 519-543.
Olsson, D., Gericke, N. & Boeve-de Pauw, J. (2022). The effectiveness of education for sustainable development revisited – a longitudinal study on secondary students’ action competence for sustainability. Environmental Education Research, 1-25
Boeve-de Pauw, J., Olsson, D., Berglund, T., & Gericke, N. (2022). Teachers’ ESD self-efficacy and practices: a longitudinal study on the impact of teacher professional development. Environmental Education Research. DOI: 10.1080/13504622.2022.2042206
Ariza M.R, Boeve-de Pauw J., Olsson D., Van Petegem P., Parra G., & Gericke N. (2021). Promoting Environmental Citizenship in Education: The Potential of the Sustainability Consciousness Questionnaire to Measure Impact of Interventions. Sustainability, 13(20),11420.
Olsson, D., Gericke, N., Sass, W., & Boeve-de Pauw, J. (2020). Self-perceived action competence for sustainability: the theoretical grounding and empirical validation of a novel research instrument. Environmental Education Research, 26(5), 742-760.
Sass, W., Boeve-de Pauw, J., Olsson, D., Gericke, N., De Maeyer, S., & Van Petegem, P. (2020). Redefining action competence: the case of sustainable development. The Journal of Environmental Education, 51(4), 292-305.
Gericke, N., Boeve‐de Pauw, J., Berglund, T., & Olsson, D. (2019). The Sustainability Consciousness Questionnaire: The theoretical development and empirical validation of an evaluation instrument for stakeholders working with sustainable development. Sustainable Development, 27(1), 35-49.
Boeve‐de Pauw, J. Gericke, N., Olsson, D., & Berglund, T. (2015). The Effectiveness of Education for Sustainable Development. Sustainability, 7, 15693-15717. http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/7/11/15693