Transformative Sustainability Education: AI Qualitative Lens

Evidano is an AI-powered qualitative data analysis platform that helps researchers analyze interviews, open-ended surveys, and documents. This post uses the PLOS Sustainability and Transformation study by Ó Riada et al. (2026) to show how AI-enabled qualitative research can make the discursive shifts in Spanish education policy actionable for researchers and educators. The primary keyword for this post is transformative sustainability education, and the analysis below synthesizes concrete findings from Ó Riada et al. (2026), including the three historical periods they identify (1975–1990, 1990–2018, 2019–present), the LOMLOE law introduced in 2020 and rolled out 2021–2024, and seven in-depth interviews conducted between February and September 2025. The goal is to explain what the study found, extract quotable evidence and dates, and map practical next steps where AI-assisted qualitative tools accelerate synthesis, triangulation, and implementation.

Key Takeaways

According to the August 18, 2026 PLOS Sustainability and Transformation article by Ó Riada et al. (2026) PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, Spain’s LOMLOE (2020; rolled out 2021–2024) opens discursive space for transformative sustainability education but practical implementation is constrained by entrenched neoliberal governance.

Ó Riada et al. (2026) identify three historical periods shaping Spanish education discourse: 1975–1990, 1990–2018, and 2019–present, showing a partial discursive shift toward TSE beginning in 2019.
Ó Riada et al. (2026) triangulated policy documents with seven in-depth interviews conducted between February and September 2025 to validate findings.
Ó Riada et al. (2026) report that LOMLOE (2020) explicitly states that “schools must become a place of stewardship and care for our environment” (LOMLOE preamble, cited in Ó Riada et al., 2026).
Ó Riada et al. (2026) warn on August 18, 2026 that without structural support, sustainability risks becoming a contested or co-opted ‘floating signifier’ rather than enabling deep pedagogical transformation.

What Happened and How the Study was Done

Answer: Ó Riada et al. (2026) performed a historical discourse analysis of Spain’s national education laws since 1975 and triangulated it with seven interviews to identify opportunities and constraints for transformative sustainability education.

Ó Riada et al. (2026) explain that they coded national education law preambles and related parliamentary minutes from 1975 to the present using NVivo and iterative coding, and they conducted seven 60-minute interviews between February and September 2025 to reach thematic saturation.

Ó Riada et al. (2026) identify three periods: emancipatory aspirations during Spain’s democratic transition (1975–1990), consolidation of OECD-shaped neoliberal consensus (1990–2018), and an opening toward TSE after 2019 driven by global climate mobilization and the 2020 LOMLOE law.

Ó Riada et al. (2026) note that changes in discourse do not guarantee classroom change: they found gaps in teacher training commitments and persistent bureaucratic and resource constraints that limit application of TSE principles.

Findings Snapshot

Date	Metric	Value	Implication
August 18, 2026	Publication	PLOS Sustainability and Transformation	Peer-reviewed analysis framing Spain as a case of discursive openings for TSE
2020 (rolled out 2021–2024)	Policy	LOMLOE education law	LOMLOE embeds sustainability language and cross-disciplinary 'learning situations' but faces implementation limits
1975–1990	Historical period	Emancipatory/pedagogical renewal	Early relational and experiential pedagogies entered policy debates
1990–2018	Historical period	OECD/neoliberal consolidation	Quantification and PISA-shaped accountability dominated policy framing
Feb–Sep 2025	Fieldwork	7 interviews	Triangulation with policymaker, educator, and activist perspectives

Implications for educators and researchers

Answer: For educators, Ó Riada et al. (2026) show that policy language now legitimizes transdisciplinary and experiential methods but teachers lack time, training, and resources to implement them at scale.

Ó Riada et al. (2026) report that the LOMLOE’s requirement for teacher training on SDGs by 2025 had not been met within the set term, highlighting an implementation gap that school leaders and regional authorities must address.

Answer: For researchers and policymakers, Ó Riada et al. (2026) recommend using mixed qualitative methods to track whether discursive openings translate into pedagogical change, since discourse alone can produce symbolic shifts without structural support.

Ó Riada et al. (2026) further document on August 18, 2026 that the meaning of sustainability in policy is contested, with examples such as the delegation of a vocational sustainability module to a private utility foundation, showing the risk of co-optation.

How Evidano Helps

Problem: Slow synthesis of policy documents and interviews → Solution: Rapid thematic mapping

Evidano is an AI-powered qualitative data analysis platform that helps researchers analyze interviews, open-ended surveys, and documents.

Evidano’s document ingestion and thematic coding accelerate replication of Ó Riada et al. (2026) style discourse analysis by automatically extracting preamble language, counting co-occurrence of signifiers such as “quality”, “sustainability” and “leadership”, and surfacing temporal shifts across laws.

Problem: Triangulation and traceability across sources → Solution: Linked evidence and AI chat

Researchers can upload interview transcripts (Ó Riada et al. used seven interviews, Feb–Sep 2025) and policy texts to Evidano to produce source-linked quotations and provenance-aware codebooks for policy briefs.

Evidano’s AI chat over your documents lets teams ask questions like “show all excerpts where LOMLOE mentions stewardship” and get direct, source-cited answers for reports or stakeholder meetings; see Evidano features.

Problem: Multilingual sources and transcription → Solution: Transcription and translation

Ó Riada et al. (2026) translated Spanish interview excerpts into English for publication; Evidano’s transcription and translation tools support custom dictionaries and PII redaction so teams can process interviews securely and reproducibly.

Evidano outputs code frequency tables, co-occurrence networks, and exportable quotations that make it practical to show policymakers the implementation gaps Ó Riada et al. found, such as unmet teacher training deadlines and bureaucratic burdens.

Problem: Communicating actionable recommendations → Solution: Visualizations and cross-segment analysis

Evidano generates visualizations that highlight which regions or school types are most affected by austerity or which policies mention sustainability most often, helping operationalize Ó Riada et al.’s finding that regional politics shape translation of LOMLOE content.

For reproducible mixed-methods policy work that connects discourse to practice, Evidano helps teams move from qualitative findings to prioritized interventions for teacher training, resource allocation, and accountability reforms.

FAQ: transformative sustainability education

What is transformative sustainability education and how does it differ from traditional environmental education?

Answer: Transformative sustainability education (TSE) focuses on relational, experiential, and emancipatory learning that cultivates agency to change socio-ecological systems.

Ó Riada et al. (2026) define TSE as learning that goes beyond knowledge transmission to foster critical thinking, transdisciplinarity, and action, contrasting with traditional knowledge-based environmental education framed by modernist, human-capital logics.

Did Spain’s LOMLOE law legally embed TSE principles?

Answer: Partly, Ó Riada et al. (2026) find that LOMLOE (2020) introduces sustainability and cross-disciplinary 'learning situations' but stops short of removing neoliberal accountability mechanisms that constrain practice.

Ó Riada et al. (2026) specifically cite the LOMLOE preamble: “schools must become a place of stewardship and care for our environment” while also documenting continued emphasis on school leadership and accountability.

How can AI-enabled qualitative research help test whether policy language leads to classroom change?

Answer: AI-enabled qualitative tools let researchers link policy texts to teacher interviews, training records, and classroom artifacts to detect implementation patterns and bottlenecks.

Ó Riada et al. (2026) used document analysis plus seven interviews; scaling that approach with tools like Evidano accelerates triangulation across larger teacher samples, regional curricula, and time-series policy texts to show whether discursive openings become practice.

Conclusion & Next Steps

Recap: Ó Riada et al. (2026) in PLOS Sustainability and Transformation document a discursive opening toward transformative sustainability education in Spain (LOMLOE, 2020; roll-out 2021–2024) while flagging implementation gaps such as unmet teacher training and persistent neoliberal pressures.

Next steps: education researchers and policy teams should combine policy document tracing with larger, representative teacher samples and longitudinal classroom data to test whether discourse shifts translate to learning outcomes, as recommended by Ó Riada et al. (2026).

If you want to scale that mixed qualitative analysis, use AI tools that keep provenance and data security central: Try Evidano for free.

Topics

transformative sustainability education
TSE Spain
qualitative analysis of education policy
AI qualitative research
LOMLOE analysis

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