In the face of intensifying socio-ecological crises, there is a growing debate about how processes of societal transformation can be shaped. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), particularly in its transformative orientation (ESD 3), is widely regarded as a key lever in this context. While ESD 3 gets increasingly differentiated in educational theory, its disciplinary grounding remains insufficiently specified. This article addresses this gap by examining which structural characteristics of sustainability issues must be exhibited to enable individual and societal transformation. Drawing on Integral Sustainability Science, sustainability-related transformation processes are differentiated along internal (the meaning-making and culture domain) and external dimensions (the behavior and systems domain), integrating both factual systemic interrelations and normative perspectives of meaning and interpretation. On this basis, sustainability issues are characterized by internal and external complexity as well as controversiality. These features are brought together in the 3C Framework for Sustainable Learning and extended by the dimension of individual and collective contingency. As societal transformation unfolds through social negotiation processes under conditions of (double) contingency, transformative education aims to foster a deeper understanding of sustainability issues and to enable learners to perceive themselves as part of societal transformation processes and to participate in collective negotiations under conditions of uncertainty.
Budmiger et al. (2026) studied this question.