Bridging Sustainability Competencies and Climate Action in Higher Education: A Competence-to-Action Instructional Framework

Higher education institutions increasingly face expectations to respond to the climate crisis through instruction that strengthens students’ capacity to analyze sustainability problems, design feasible interventions, and implement solutions with accountability. Yet many sustainability courses remain knowledge-heavy and leave the pathway from learning to action implicit, which can constrain action readiness and complicate assessment of applied competence. This paper presents a competence-to-action instructional framework for environmental sustainability education in higher education. The framework is grounded in an integrative conceptual review and synthesis across Education for Sustainable Development, sustainability competency scholarship, experiential and transformative learning traditions, whole-institution approaches, campus living lab research, and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). The analysis applies iterative thematic synthesis to identify recurring instructional mechanisms, institutional enablers, and assessment implications, and then translates those themes into testable propositions and design and assessment tools. The synthesis yields six propositions specifying instructional and institutional conditions that support sustainability competency development and action readiness. Across the included literatures, the propositions emphasize authentic, place-based problems; sustained engagement with stakeholders; structured reflection that links values, trade-offs, and decisions; opportunities to test, revise, and communicate proposed interventions; and enabling infrastructures that connect curriculum to campus operations and community partnerships. Building on these propositions, the paper articulates six design commitments and provides two implementation tools: a competency-to-activity-to-evidence map and a performance-based assessment rubric aligned to widely used competency categories (systems thinking; anticipatory, normative, strategic, and interpersonal competence). As a conceptual framework paper rather than a systematic review or empirical validation study, it offers practical guidance for faculty, program leaders, and sustainability offices seeking to align curriculum, campus operations, and external partnerships while generating valid, transparent evidence of student learning and action preparedness. It treats UDL as a validity and equity safeguard that maintains rigorous expectations while reducing construct-irrelevant barriers through multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression. The paper concludes with implications for course redesign and institutional scaling through living lab infrastructure and whole-institution coherence, and it identifies priorities for future research, including cross-disciplinary pilots, refinement of assessment guidance through shared scoring practices, and longitudinal study of whether competence-to-action indicators relate to sustained civic or professional sustainability action.