Beyond competencies: Sustainable schemas as cognitive architectures in education for sustainability

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) possesses remarkable theoretical richness, yet classroom practice does not consistently yield the durable, transferable cognitive architectures that sustainability’s complexity demands. This article argues that the persistent gap lies less in the definition of sustainability competencies than in the absence of a cognitive architecture specifying how those competencies are constructed, integrated, and transferred. Building on Tabka, we develop the concept of sustainable schemas: cognitive structures specifically organized around the operational invariants that characterize sustainability situations, systemic interdependence, extended temporality, productive uncertainty, extended responsibility, and differential justice. Drawing on Vergnaud’s theory of conceptual fields and Morin’s epistemological foundations, we distinguish sustainable schemas from adjacent constructs (mental models, epistemic cognition, socio-scientific reasoning) and articulate their internal architecture. A central theoretical advance of this article is the integration of environmental justice not as a normative add-on but as a structural invariant of the cognitive architecture itself. We conclude with implications for curriculum design and a research agenda.