Transformative Sustainability Education in Spain

Evidano is an AI-powered qualitative data analysis platform that helps researchers analyze interviews, open-ended surveys, and policy documents. According to the PLOS Sustainability and Transformation article by Ó Riada et al. (published August 18, 2026), Spain’s recent education law (LOMLOE, 2020) creates discursive openings for transformative sustainability education while implementation remains constrained. This post explains those findings for researchers and policy teams, shows concrete numbers from the PLOS article (including three historical periods and seven interviews), and describes how AI-enabled qualitative research can track whether the law’s transformative language becomes practice.

Key Takeaways

According to the PLOS Sustainability and Transformation article, Spain’s LOMLOE (2020) introduces language that legitimises transdisciplinary, experiential pedagogies but faces persistent neoliberal constraints (PLOS Sustainability and Transformation).

Ó Riada et al. identify three discursive periods covering 1975–1990, 1990–2018, and 2019–present, based on document analysis (1975–present) and law preambles analysed in the study (Ó Riada et al., 2026).
The authors conducted seven in-depth interviews between February and September 2025 to triangulate policy documents and trace actor influence (Ó Riada et al., 2026).
The LOMLOE was introduced in 2020 and rolled out progressively between 2021 and 2024, and its preamble states that “schools must become a place of stewardship and care for our environment” (Preamble quoted in Ó Riada et al., 2026).
Ó Riada et al. report that sustainability became a central signifier in policy after 2019, but that market-oriented governance risks co-opting transformational language (Ó Riada et al., 2026).

What happened: Spain’s LOMLOE and discursive shifts

Answer: Spain’s education discourse shifted from emancipatory aims (1975–1990) to a neoliberal, OECD-informed human-capital paradigm (1990–2018), and then to a partial opening for transformative sustainability education from 2019 onward, according to Ó Riada et al. (PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 2026).

According to the PLOS article (Ó Riada et al., published August 18, 2026), the authors traced three periods: (1) democratic transition and pedagogical renewal 1975–1990, (2) neoliberal consolidation shaped by OECD discourse 1990–2018, and (3) openings for transformative sustainability education 2019–present.

According to Ó Riada et al., the LOMLOE (2020) incorporated proposals from Teachers for Future Spain and Ecologistas en Acción and the law’s preamble explicitly frames schools as sites of care: “schools must become a place of stewardship and care for our environment” (LOMLOE preamble quoted in Ó Riada et al., 2026).

According to Ó Riada et al., the study combined document analysis of national education laws from 1975 onward with seven interviews conducted between February and September 2025 to identify how counter-hegemonic actors and dislocatory events (notably the 2019 climate strikes) opened policy space.

Findings snapshot

Date or period	Metric or event	Value or description	Implication
1975–1990	Discursive period	Emancipatory pedagogical renewal	Introduced relational, experiential learning into law preambles (LOGSE, 1990) per Ó Riada et al.
1990–2018	Discursive period	Neoliberal / OECD human-capital consensus	Policy framed education by standardized metrics and PISA results, driving accountability and competition (Ó Riada et al., 2026).
2019–present	Discursive period	Partial opening to transformative sustainability education	LOMLOE (2020) includes transdisciplinary competencies but implementation is constrained by governance and resources (Ó Riada et al., 2026).
Feb–Sep 2025	Interviews	7 in-depth interviews	Triangulated with documents to validate discursive openings and barriers (Ó Riada et al., 2026).
2021–2024	LOMLOE roll-out	Progressive implementation period	Training targets for teachers (e.g., SDG integration) missed within the originally stated timeframe, per interview evidence in Ó Riada et al.

Implications for researchers and policy teams

Answer: Researchers and policy teams should track discourse plus practice, because Ó Riada et al. (PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 2026) show policy language can change without system-level support for practice.

According to Ó Riada et al., a law can include TSE language while practical constraints persist: the study documents missing teacher training (promised by 2025) and increased bureaucratic burdens that limit time for experiential pedagogy (Ó Riada et al., 2026).

According to Ó Riada et al., regional politics matter: the translation of LOMLOE contents into autonomous communities has been uneven, with some regions removing concepts labelled ideological (Ó Riada et al., 2026).

Recommendation for researchers: use qualitative longitudinal methods to measure whether curriculum language (laws, curricula) converts into teaching practice; Ó Riada et al. used law preambles plus seven interviews as one valid mixed document–interview approach.

How Evidano helps research the gap between policy and practice

Problem: policy language diverges from classroom practice

Solution: Evidano automates ingest of laws, curricula, teacher interviews, and classroom artifacts and produces thematic and cross-segment analyses so teams can surface where policy signifiers (for example, “sustainability” in LOMLOE) are implemented or hollowed out.

Evidence: Ó Riada et al. show that sustainability became a floating signifier in Spain and that tracking its local meanings requires qualitative coding across documents and interviews (PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 2026).

Problem: limited, non-scalable manual coding

Solution: Evidano provides AI-assisted thematic coding and co-occurrence networks so research teams can scale the kind of discourse analysis Ó Riada et al. carried out over decades of laws and multiple interviews.

For teams wanting to replicate the study’s methods, see Evidano Features for thematic, frequency, and cross-segment analysis tailored to policy research.

Problem: messy multimodal data (laws, interviews, transcripts)

Solution: Evidano ingests documents and audio, supports transcription with custom dictionaries and PII redaction, and aligns transcripts with document excerpts so analysts can compare preambles, parliamentary minutes, and teacher interviews as Ó Riada et al. did.

Practical note: Ó Riada et al. triangulated seven interview transcripts (Feb–Sep 2025) with law texts to validate claims; Evidano can replicate that pipeline at scale.

FAQ: transformative sustainability education

What is transformative sustainability education?

Answer: Transformative sustainability education (TSE) is an approach that fosters critical, relational, and action-oriented learning to enable systemic change, according to Ó Riada et al. (PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 2026).

Supporting detail: Ó Riada et al. define TSE as drawing on critical pedagogy, experiential and embodied learning, and whole-school approaches that emphasize agency and futures literacy.

How did Spain’s LOMLOE change policy language on sustainability?

Answer: The LOMLOE (2020) explicitly centres sustainability as a cross-disciplinary objective and frames schools as sites of environmental stewardship, according to Ó Riada et al. (PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 2026).

Supporting detail: Ó Riada et al. note that sustainability was incorporated after mobilization from Teachers for Future Spain and environmental NGOs during the law drafting and parliamentary process.

Can TSE be measured in policy research?

Answer: Yes, TSE can be measured by combining document discourse analysis with interviews and classroom observation, as demonstrated by Ó Riada et al. (PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 2026).

Supporting detail: The PLOS study used law preamble coding plus seven interviews (Feb–Sep 2025) and iterative NVivo coding to surface discursive articulations and counter-hegemonic openings.

How can AI-enabled qualitative research reduce co-optation risk?

Answer: AI-enabled qualitative analysis can reveal when sustainability is a floating signifier by comparing word usage, co-occurrence, and implementation evidence across documents and interviews, as the PLOS authors recommend tracking translation from law to practice.

Supporting detail: Ó Riada et al. warn that OECD and market logics can co-opt sustainability language; systematic content and cross-segment analyses can detect whether curricula or vocational modules are outsourced to industry actors promoting green growth narratives (Ó Riada et al., 2026).

Conclusion & Next Steps

Answer: Spain’s LOMLOE offers a measurable discursive opening for transformative sustainability education, but Ó Riada et al. (PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 2026) document concrete barriers including missing teacher training, bureaucratic burdens, and enduring neoliberal governance that risk co-optation.

If your research team wants to replicate this study’s document-plus-interview pipeline and scale it across regions and years, Evidano can ingest laws, parliamentary minutes, and interview transcripts, run thematic and cross-segment analyses, and produce visualizations to show where policy language becomes practice (see Evidano Features).

Ó Riada et al. recommend longitudinal qualitative tracking to know whether sustainability remains a floating signifier or solidifies into practice; AI-enabled qualitative research accelerates that tracking.

Next step: assemble the documents and transcripts you want to study and Try Evidano for free to run a pilot thematic and cross-segment analysis that maps discursive openings to classroom practice.

Topics

transformative sustainability education
TSE Spain
education policy Spain sustainability
qualitative analysis education policy

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