ABSTRACT
Effective sustainability education is transformative. Once students understand the relevant concepts, they should think differently from before and gain capabilities to practice sustainably that they did not have before their sustainability education. Threshold concept theory is a curriculum design theory that is especially relevant for designing transformational education. The theory proposes that by identifying the most transformative concepts, namely threshold concepts, educators can focus curricula on the most critical and challenging learning. We identify the term sustainability and the concepts systems thinking, multiple ways of knowing, transdisciplinarity, triple bottom line, life cycle thinking and design thinking as threshold concepts. Others could also be identified. We recommend intentionally designing curricula to give each threshold concept sufficient attention, especially focusing on challenging aspects of the concepts. To achieve transformative sustainability education, accreditation and capability development for educators should also focus on threshold concepts.
