Awareness of escalating sustainability crises, including climate change, species extinction, and growing social injustice, evokes a wide range of emotions, often negative, in a growing number of people. Worry, anxiety, sadness, frustration, and anger are frequently reported, especially by young people. Consequently, the high relevance of emotions for effective sustainability education has long been acknowledged. At the same time, emotional competencies have received too little attention in prevailing competence models. Studies from educational practice also indicate that teachers often feel unqualified to deal with emotions. The frequent suppression of emotions that results from this can demonstrably contribute to learners feeling overwhelmed by sustainability issues and avoiding them. Against this background, this dissertation examines how human emotions, sustainability crises, and education interrelate. Specifically, it examines the questions of why emotion-sensitive sustainability education is necessary and how it could be realized. In order to answer these questions, it is first necessary to examine how emotions are addressed in the German education system. The current state of research indicates that emotions are in fact too strongly neglected, despite their high relevance for all forms of learning. A mixed-methods analysis of 422 German curricula confirms this hypothesis and shows that emotional competence (with the facets of emotion knowledge, emotion recognition, emotion expression, emotion regulation, and empathy) is insufficiently structurally anchored in the German school system (Study 1). At the same time, a latent class analysis of 3,000 young people and teachers shows how widespread feelings of hopelessness are among both educators and students (Study 2). This hopelessness, along with increasingly widespread worries, fears, and frustrations, can affect mental health. Using the same sample, multiple regression analysis shows that sustainability-related emotions are significantly stronger predictors of behavior than knowledge and attitudes and thus could be central drivers of the sustainability transformation (Study 3). A systematic review then examines the role of emotions in transformative sustainability learning and derives implications for educational practice and science. The review (n = 20) reveals that widespread negative emotions (e.g., frustration, sadness, guilt) are found particularly at the beginning of transformative learning processes. In contrast, predominantly positive emotions are found during social interactions (e.g., gratitude, fun) and when trying out new actions (e.g., satisfaction, pride). This suggests how learners’ emotionality may differ substantially depending on their learning phase and the didactics chosen (Study 4). The results of the four studies and the findings of the respective strands of research highlight an asymmetry: emotions are highly relevant when people engage with sustainability issues, but at the same time the German education system in general, and sustainability education in particular, still pays too little attention to emotions. For this reason, emotional competence is proposed as a competence concept for sustainability education. Using five competence facets and concrete examples, the usefulness of the concept for sustainability education is illustrated and general recommendations for science and practice are derived.
