Policy openings: Transformative sustainability education

According to Ó Riada et al. (2026) in PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, Spain’s 2020 education reform (LOMLOE) created discursive openings for transformative sustainability education while implementation remains constrained by entrenched neoliberal logics. Evidano is an AI-powered qualitative data analysis platform that helps researchers analyze interviews, open-ended surveys, and documents. Education researchers and policy teams need fast, defensible ways to turn law texts, interview transcripts, and curricular documents into evidence about what changed and what is actually happening in classrooms, and AI-enabled qualitative analysis accelerates that work without sacrificing auditability.

Key Takeaways

According to the PLOS Sustainability and Transformation article by Ó Riada et al. (published 18 August 2026), Spain’s 2020 LOMLOE introduced policy language that opens space for transformative sustainability education but persistent market-oriented governance risks co-optation. The PLOS analysis used document analysis of national laws and seven in-depth interviews conducted between February and September 2025 to reach these conclusions.

Ó Riada et al. identify three historical periods in Spanish education discourse: 1975–1990, 1990–2018, and 2019–present (PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 18 August 2026).
The PLOS study is based on seven interviews conducted between February and September 2025, each lasting about 60 minutes on average (Ó Riada et al., 2026).
Spain’s LOMLOE was introduced in 2020 and rolled out progressively from 2021 to 2024, and the law’s preamble explicitly says “schools must become a place of stewardship and care for our environment” (Ó Riada et al., 2026).
Ó Riada et al. warn on 18 August 2026 that without changes to governance and teacher training, sustainability language in policy risks becoming a market-friendly “floating signifier” rather than delivering deep pedagogical change.

What happened: Spain’s discursive shifts and LOMLOE in plain terms

Answer: Spain’s education discourse shifted from emancipatory aims (1975–1990) to OECD-shaped human-capital framing (1990–2018) and then to partial openings for transformative sustainability education from 2019 onward, as reported by Ó Riada et al. (PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 18 August 2026).

Ó Riada et al. (published 18 August 2026) document that the democratic transition (1975–1990) enabled pedagogical renewal movements to push for participatory, experiential education; the OECD-era reforms (1990–2018) prioritized measurable outputs and PISA rankings; and the 2019 climate mobilization plus coalition politics created openings incorporated into the 2020 LOMLOE.

Ó Riada et al. (2026) show that LOMLOE (introduced 2020, rolled out 2021–2024) legitimised cross-disciplinary ‘learning situations’ and a stewardship framing, but implementers report missing teacher training, increased bureaucratic evaluation, and ongoing competitive governance that limit practice-level change.

Snapshot table: key dates, metrics, and implications from the PLOS study

Date / Period	Metric or Evidence	Value or Count	Implication (as interpreted by Ó Riada et al.)
1975–1990	Dominant discourse period	Emancipatory/pedagogical renewal influence	Enabled relational, experiential pedagogies to enter policy discourse
1990–2018	OECD/PISA influence	Shift to human-capital framing and standardized evaluation	Narrowing of what counts as 'quality' in education
2019–present	Policy openings after climate mobilization	LOMLOE introduced 2020; rollout 2021–2024	Sustainability appears as a central signifier but is contested in practice
Feb–Sep 2025	Interview dataset	7 in-depth interviews, ~60 minutes each	Triangulated with document analysis to identify discursive openings
18 Aug 2026	Article publication	PLOS Sustain Transform article by Ó Riada et al.	Public, peer-reviewed synthesis of discursive history and constraints

Implications for education researchers and qualitative teams

Answer: Researchers should treat policy language about sustainability as contested and map both discursive openings and institutional constraints, as advised by Ó Riada et al. (PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 18 August 2026).

Ó Riada et al. (2026) show that policy texts can include transformative language while preserving neoliberal governance mechanisms; researchers must therefore analyze laws, parliamentary debates, and interviews together to see how rhetoric translates into resource and training commitments.

Ó Riada et al. (2026) also document that teacher training promised in law (target year 2025) had not been delivered within the set term, indicating a common gap between legislative language and implementation that qualitative fieldwork can expose.

How Evidano helps: from law text to classroom evidence

Problem: Policy language is ambiguous and implementation is patchy

Answer: Evidano helps teams rapidly link policy texts to interview evidence and classroom data to test whether law language is enacted in practice.

Evidano is an AI-powered qualitative data analysis platform that helps researchers analyze interviews, open-ended surveys, and documents, and the platform can ingest education laws, parliamentary minutes, and teacher transcripts to produce thematic coding and cross-segment comparisons.

Feature link: use the Evidano features page to see thematic analysis, co-occurrence networks, and hierarchical code trees that make it straightforward to show where LOMLOE language about stewardship is actually discussed by teachers.

Problem: Manual coding slows evidence synthesis and weakens reproducibility

Answer: Evidano automates initial coding and provides audit trails so teams can scale analysis without losing transparency.

Evidano supports transcription with custom dictionaries, AI chat over documents to test analytic queries, and exportable visualizations that let policy analysts and teacher-trainers present reproducible evidence about training gaps and bureaucratic burdens mentioned in the PLOS study.

Problem: Stakeholder segmentation matters but is time consuming

Answer: Evidano enables cross-segment analyses so researchers can compare how regional governments, unions, and teachers frame sustainability in minutes rather than weeks.

Evidano’s cross-segment frequency and co-occurrence analyses let teams trace whether sustainability is articulated as 'stewardship' in national law but as 'green growth' in vocational curricula, mirroring the contested examples Ó Riada et al. report.

FAQ: transformative sustainability education

What is transformative sustainability education and why does it matter?

Answer: Transformative sustainability education (TSE) is an approach that fosters critical thinking, agency, and relational learning to enable systemic change, as defined in Ó Riada et al. (PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 18 August 2026).

Ó Riada et al. (2026) explain that TSE draws on critical pedagogy and whole-school approaches to cultivate futures literacy and political agency, distinguishing it from knowledge-only environmental education.

Did the 2020 LOMLOE legally endorse TSE in Spain?

Answer: LOMLOE included language that legitimizes cross-disciplinary sustainability teaching, but Ó Riada et al. (PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 18 August 2026) stress that legal language alone did not guarantee full implementation.

Ó Riada et al. (2026) cite the law’s preamble phrase that “schools must become a place of stewardship and care for our environment, ” while also documenting missed teacher training deadlines and ongoing competitive accountability structures.

How did Ó Riada et al. reach their conclusions about Spain?

Answer: Ó Riada et al. used discourse analysis of national education laws, parliamentary minutes, and seven purposive interviews held between February and September 2025 (reported in PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 18 August 2026).

The PLOS article (Ó Riada et al., 2026) describes iterative NVivo coding, triangulation with interviews, and a genealogical approach to trace how OECD frameworks and PISA shaped policy over decades.

How can qualitative teams assess whether policy language is being enacted locally?

Answer: Teams should combine document analysis, representative teacher interviews, and classroom observation, an approach recommended by Ó Riada et al. (PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 18 August 2026).

Ó Riada et al. (2026) note that triangulation is essential because laws may contain transformative signifiers while municipal administrations or regional governments strip or reinterpret those contents.

Conclusion & Next Steps

Answer: Spain’s 2020 LOMLOE created a discursive opening for transformative sustainability education, but Ó Riada et al. (PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 18 August 2026) show that governance, training, and accountability systems determine whether language becomes practice.

Researchers and reformers need reproducible qualitative evidence that links law to classroom reality; Ó Riada et al. illustrate precisely why combining document analysis with interviews is necessary to avoid mistaking policy rhetoric for systemic change.

If you run qualitative research on education policy or want to map how LOMLOE language is enacted across regions, Evidano can speed coding, support transcription, and produce defensible visualizations to brief ministers, teacher unions, or funders.

Next step: Try Evidano for free.

Topics

transformative sustainability education
TSE Spain
education policy discourse

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