DDS – Die Deutsche Schule: Issue The Apple Ring With a Bite

The article links educational-theoretical approaches to transformative learning with both subject-specific and cross-curricular perspectives on sustainable development and integrates them into a didactically useful model: the “apple ring with a bite”. From an educational-theoretical point of view, education in the context of sustainable development must not be understood as a steering instrument for achieving predefined goals, but rather as an open process of appropriating self and world. In this process, learners engage with complexity, controversy, and emotionality, reflect on value orientations and ethical questions, and explore different options for action. The necessary subject-specific foundation for this can be conceptualized as education in sustainable development, which complements existing conceptions of ESD. Sustainability science is identified as the central disciplinary reference point. For didactic implementation, the apple ring is proposed as a design tool that translates this theoretical perspective into a (trans-)disciplinary structure, making both planetary boundaries and socio-economic minimum standards visible. On the basis of the apple ring, teachers can design learning environments in which scientific, ethical, and socio-political dimensions are linked in a multi-perspectival way. Examples related to global and national distributive justice illustrate how the apple ring can be used for the didactic treatment of controversial issues. In this article, we use the German term “Didaktik der Nachhaltigkeitswissenschaft” to refer to the emerging field of sustainability science education, that is, the theory and research on teaching and learning in sustainability science. The model thus serves as an initial conceptual approach to a Didaktik der Nachhaltigkeitswissenschaft and offers a bridge between theoretical reflection and practice-oriented lesson design.

Keywords
Eduaction for Sustainable Development, Sustainability, Transformation