Sustainability Education as Struggle: Schools in the Fight for Eco-Social Justice

International Environmental Justice Webinar Series – Society for Global Psychology, Division 52 of the American Psychological Association

Fecha de evento: February 12th, 2026
Hora: 3pm ET – 2pm CST – 12pm PST – 9pm CET
Recording of the session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMLAnGcswIg&t=3539s

In this seminar, Alfredo Jornet and Eliana Bussi will introduce an innovative research programme developed through international collaborative networks addressing the urgent challenge of safeguarding fundamental rights, such as the rights to peace, dignity, equality and a habitable environment, in the midst of ongoing social and planetary crisis. In this context of vulnerability, precarity, and struggle, schools emerge as spaces of resistance and transformation, fostering change towards fairer societies. We propose an expanded vision of the school as a dynamic, relational agent that extends beyond physical buildings and into socioeducational ecosystems. We envisage it as a vital space shaped by the relationships between its physical and social environments and the diverse actors involved, including teachers, families, neighborhood organizations and other entities dedicated to safeguarding and empowering younger generations. In this seminar, we will present case studies that demonstrate how schools become spaces of struggle and resistance against structural inequalities, emphasizing the importance of collective action in situations of dispossession and vulnerability. More specifically, we present results from ethnographic work (a) following a group of public school teachers who have mobilized to protect their students’ right to a dignified home—hence bridging the ongoing housing crisis in Spain to issues of educational justice, and (b) on collaborative efforts to design a unit on sustainability that specifically addresses environmental justice in a context of exclusion. We also share an online platform (EJES en Red) for collaborative school-led action that emerges from these and other research-practice partnerships. The seminar provides an opportunity to share research experiences aimed at collaboration and collective action in transformative educational research, empowering schools and communities to become agents of change and contribute to the creation of fairer, more sustainable, and more just societies.

Alfredo Jornet – Eliana Bussi – University of Girona

Alfredo Jornet is an educational researcher whose work bridges critical climate education, political ecology, and sustainability. He examines how educational practices and discourses shape agency, and responses to climate injustice, engaging interdisciplinary and participatory approaches to address socio-ecological challenges within communities and schools.

Eliana Bussi is a postdoctoral researcher in education and environmental justice, focusing on ecosocial inequalities, sustainability, and participatory methodologies. Her work is developed mainly in Argentina and Spain, connecting schools, communities, and territories to address environmental injustice, precarious living conditions, and transformative education through interdisciplinary and decolonial research networks.