Lessons from i5 - Assessing Impactful Pedagogy implementation
In sustainability education, much of the focus has traditionally been on what we teach—on the content and facts—, and why we teach—empowering students to address the ecological and social crisis we face. Equally important, though, is the how—the teaching methods we use to share that knowledge while fostering critical thinking, deep reflection, and meaningful action.
In other words, to mainstream sustainability literacy, the mission we carry at Sulitest, we are called to rethink not just what we teach, but how we teach—because the how may be the key to fostering a generation that can truly make a difference.
Introducing the Impactful Five Pedagogy (i5)
Over the last 3 years, we at Sulitest have been collaborating with PRME on the Impactful Five (i5) project. Building upon the LEGO Foundation’s prior research and expertise in teaching methods, the i5 project developed and piloted innovative pedagogical approaches for holistic skills development to help the next generation of leaders both envision and build a sustainable future for all. Via the i5 Playbook and corresponding series of workshops, i5 project leaders invited participants to explore how educators can innovate in ways that make learning meaningful, joyful, active, social, and iterative.
Throughout the project, we at Sulitest designed assessment frameworks and conducted research to better understand both how educators adopt the i5 Framework and what impact can be gained from it. Such research included:
- Longitudinal surveys sent to workshop attendees
- Ethnographic research with a group of eight educators (including interviews, observations, and focus groups)
- Literature reviews, to bridge pedagogical theory and research to what was observed in i5
In this blog, we’ll share some of the key lessons we learned about promoting transformative societal change via impactful teaching.
Who gets to prioritize pedagogical development
One of the first insights from our research was that impactful teaching methods tend to attract educators who are already deeply committed to improving their pedagogy. In fact, 72% of surveyed educators stated that professional development in teaching was one of their first priorities. But this raises an important question: are these initiatives only reaching those who have the privilege and time to pursue them?
Moreover, much of this professional development happens informally—through self-reflection, networking, and sharing experiences with peers. This highlights a systemic gap: structured support for educators to improve their teaching is still lacking. If we truly want to enhance education, institutions need to invest in comprehensive professional development programs that give all educators—not just the most dedicated—access to impactful pedagogical training.
Why educators value i5
Another key finding from our research was that i5 provides educators with practical tools and insights they can use to build upon existing values. Many educators already believe in interactive, experiential, and student-centred teaching, but i5 helped them implement or hone these methods more systematically. Such a finding explains, why, for example we developed and structured our TASK™ sustainability knowledge model and resources like the Navigational Charts as we did—to serve as a helpful framework that empowers educators to design and review curricula in line with sustainability learning objectives.
That said, embracing impactful pedagogy isn’t always easy. Transformative learning often challenges both educators and students. In fact, studies suggest that engaging deeply in learning can create discomfort, confusion, and even crisis (Sterling, 2011), as students may not be mentally or emotionally prepared for this type of engagement (Moore, 2005). Indeed, discussing critical sustainability topics—such as the climate emergency, inequality, hunger, and conflict—can create real discomfort. But this is a necessary discomfort. Indeed, we believe that such topics must be integrated into every curriculum, but this can be done thoughtfully, in ways that ensure educators facilitate positively impactful (even if not always fun) learning opportunities. This is where a framework like i5 is helpful, once again. At the same time, at the institutional level, it is crucial that faculty receive proper training to feel confident in addressing such topics, while also ensuring that both educators and students have access to mental and emotional support. It's about getting the right mix of challenge and support for everyone involved.
How educators made their practice more impactful
While some educators made dramatic changes to their teaching using i5 principles, others took smaller, incremental steps such as creating safe spaces for student voices, celebrating student success, or sharing personal experiences. Our research found, through a series of interviews and classroom observations, that both approaches proved valuable.
A particularly rewarding outcome was seeing educators rediscover their own passion for teaching. Initially, some felt a bit constrained, believing they had no room for trial and error. But the more they engaged with i5, the more they realized that students were responding positively to experimentation. One educator reported: “I have learned that students don’t mind when we try something new and it doesn’t work perfectly. I will be more willing to experiment with new tools. I believe I will have more courage to try.” This revitalization of teaching practice was echoed across our research.
So educators, don’t be afraid to experiment! Small changes can lead to meaningful transformations—for you and your students. The journey toward more impactful teaching starts with a single step, and the rewards are well worth the effort.
The barriers to change
As with any change process and despite its successes, integrating i5 into teaching was not without challenges. Through our surveys and interviews, we found that educators struggled with
- allocating enough time to engage with this framework and change,
- ensuring consistency across the curriculum, and
- keeping students’ engagement especially in culturally diverse and/or large classrooms.
These are similar challenges we observe in institutions wanting to teach more about sustainability, which are important for institutions to consider and mitigate when planning their own change process.
Another challenge was ensuring students were adequately prepared for active participation. Research suggests that active learning is less effective when students lack foundational knowledge or when class sizes are too large to allow for flexible, dynamic teaching (Kirschner et al., 2016) – which is why at Sulitest we value pre-assessments like TASK™ to inform teaching, enabling educators to meet students where they are and provide a more personalized learning experience.
The impact on students
Despite such challenges, the most compelling evidence of i5’s impact was its effect on students. Educators observed increased engagement, stronger teacher-student relationships, and improved learning outcomes. Students became more autonomous, more collaborative, and more inclusive.
These findings align with broader research: student engagement is a strong predictor of academic success and personal development (Carini et al., 2006; Reeve & Tseng, 2011). Experiential learning, in particular, has been shown to enhance critical thinking, collaboration, and overall enjoyment of coursework (Zelechoski et al., 2017).
Beyond academics, i5 helped also students develop essential responsible leadership skills, including:
- Critical reflection and ethical reasoning
- Emotional resilience and self-awareness
- Cross-cultural understanding and empathetic communication
- Future visioning and systems thinking
- Problem-solving and prototyping skills
While i5 is not focused on sustainability, by inviting students to connect with one another, reflect on their background and interests, develop empathy and curiosity, it organically led students to seeking greater purpose in their learning and future careers. Educators in our research found that i5-inspired courses encouraged students to see themselves as change agents. By connecting learning to real-world contexts, students felt empowered to pursue careers aligned with sustainability and social impact.
What next? A call for systemic change
One of the most powerful takeaways from this project is that impactful teaching transcends subject matter. Educators across disciplines—be it “business-as-usual” or sustainability management—reported positive impacts from the i5 pedagogical framework, indicating that impactful teaching is not discipline-dependent but influenced by value alignment and educators’ willingness to incorporate the impactful pedagogy methods into their classes in profound and meaningful ways. In other words, no matter what an educator is teaching, they can make it impactful if they’re willing to adopt the right approach.
Nevertheless, simply applying a new method or tool to a single lesson isn’t enough. Impactful teaching is not a tick-box exercise. Instead, it needs to be a systemic, deep, and intentional part of the entire curriculum. Studies, such as Coker et al. (2016), show that impactful learning experiences depend not only on the breadth of activities but also on their depth. Simply offering a variety of activities is valuable for fostering collaboration and improving relationships, but deeper engagement with transformative pedagogy yields far more significant learning outcomes.
The key takeaway here is clear: Effective transformation takes time, knowledge, and an intentional effort to design curricula that actively incorporate meaningful, sustainable learning experiences.
Final thoughts
Our experience with the i5 Project has reaffirmed our belief that impactful pedagogy benefits everyone—students learn better, educators rediscover their passion for teaching, institutions cultivate a more dynamic learning culture, and societies benefit from more civically-engaged future leaders.
But for all these benefits to be fully realized, we must move beyond individual enthusiasm and build systemic support for transformative teaching practices. Impactful teaching and learning takes a whole village. earning made meaningful, joyful, active, social, and iterative all sounds quite easy and straightforward. But it’s not.
The challenge comes, first, with learning how to eliminate from one’s teaching practices all those things we traditionally tend to do in classrooms that have none of those positive qualities—like lecturing or reading from one’s PowerPoint slides. Then, second, the challenge comes from mustering the courage and imagination of trying out new things, of braving difficult conversations, of engaging the emotions and inner self, of encouraging everyone to “mess about” with new ideas and experiences, and of uncovering hidden values, norms, and biases that hinder a deeper understanding of who we really are, both teacher and learner. It’s when instructors are most themselves—genuine, personal, inspiring, joyful, fun, engaged, empathetic—that students find their teaching more meaningful. A single educator really can make a difference.
So, we leave you with a question: “What would happen if the Impactful Pedagogy approach was implemented systematically across an entire institution, rather than by isolated individual educators here and there?” Just think of the impact!
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the PRME team for the collaboration over the years – Cheyenne Maddox, Meredith Storey, Samantha Thompson, and Zein Ibrahim.
Thank you to the educators who participated in the ethnographic research, sharing with us their time, experiences, expertise and insights – Christy Ashley, Clarissa Miranda, Dusan Kucera, Hadia FakhrEldin, Manal El Abboubi, Rick Mukhopadhyay, Steve Smith, and Victoria González Gutiérrez.
Lastly, thank you to all that contributed to the Sulitest i5 team – Aurelien Decamps, Estela Castelli Florino Pilz, Kurt Klusch, Margreet Freiling, Pauline Proboeuf, Renaud Richard, and Scott Blair.
