Daniel Olsson

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, Belgium Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Czech Republic. You can find my publication list below.

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.

Acadmic Partner of the Horizon Europe project called IMP>ACT

Member of the Academic Committee ERIDOB (European Researchers in Didactics of Biology), 2022 – 

Scientific collaboration with Green Flag, Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation, 2022–

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