Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability Volume 17, issue 1, 2015 Editorial The Editorial board welcomes this issue of the Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability, which consists of the papers that deal with very important issues within education for sustainable development: paradigmatic frameworks to guide educators in assessing sustainability competencies, digital citizenship in the afterschool space and its implications for education for sustainable development (ESD), the environmental know- ledge and attitudes and ESD and many others. I would like to thank all the members of the Editorial board for their hard work. My thanks are also due to the authors of the papers. The paper by Besong and Holland focuses on the concepts of sustainability and sustainability competence, which are controversial, complex, difficult to define and measure and have varied meanings for different people and practices. Given the complex nature of sustainability, there is limited availability of paradigmatic frameworks to guide educators in assessing sustainability competencies. The paper introduces the Dispositions, Abilities and Behaviours (DAB) framework, which influenced the design of an intervention in 2013ñ2014 that profiled sustainability competencies among final year undergraduate students in a higher education institution. The results of the mixed methods study indicate that the DAB framework has good potential as a guide to educators or researchers in understanding and profiling sustainability-related abilities, attitudes and actions (areas of performance) of cohorts of students within higher education settings. The paper by Howard accentuates that ESD challenges traditional curricula and formal schooling in important ways. ESD requires systemic thinking, interdisciplinarity and is strengthened through the contributions of all disciplines. As with any transformative societal and technological shift, new questions arise when educators are required to venture into unchartered waters. Research has led to some interesting findings concerning digital literacies in the K-12 classroom. One finding is that a great deal of digital media learning is happening outside the traditional classroom space and is taking place in the afterschool space. Understanding the nature of learning in the afterschool space and bridging the current divide between formal schooling and the learning happening online is critical to the establishment of core ESD values and skills, namely ethical online com- munities and the development of respectful, tolerant global digital citizens. The paper by Geng and her colleagues investigates stress levels of pre-service teachers (PSTs) across three categories of teaching context: early childhood, primary and secon- dary. This paper focuses on exploring the stressors in the completion of tasks in teaching practicum in the three categories of teaching context and an awareness of and access to support systems. The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and an online questionnaire were used to measure the nature and level of stress. Significant results were found in relation to the school climate and the stress levels of PSTs across the three different teaching contexts. These findings have implications in terms of understanding different PSTsí stress levels across the three teaching contexts and ways they could be supported to reduce their stress level and achieve better study outcomes. The paper by Mifsud and Verret assesses the environmental knowledge and attitudes of the. Maltese public towards the local marine environment, marine protected areas (MPAs) and ESD. A questionnaire was administered to members of the public at three different locations. The study found that although the Maltese public strongly appreciates the beauty of Maltaís marine environment, the level of knowledge surrounding the marine environment is low. Furthermore, the research indicates that while the public agrees that the marine environment should be protected, there is a notable lack of awareness of the five local MPAs. Based on the research findings, a model linking ESD to MPAs and aiming to foster a sense of ownership among the public by encouraging their involvement in the management of local MPAs is proposed. The paper by Kolbe concentrates on well-organised waste management, which is an essential part of sustainable development. The saving of resources and energy is every- oneís concern and environmental education is vital to guarantee a sustainable lifestyle in the long run. To find out what similarities and differences in views regarding waste management exist between grammar school pupils and comprehensive school pupils in England, questionnaires were designed and distributed in two schools in the same English city. The questionnaires aimed at quantifying and establishing studentsí knowledge, attitudes and behaviour regarding waste management. The results illustrate that students from the grammar school had higher levels of knowledge, were more likely to recycle and used more sources of information regarding waste management. Waste reduction was considered important by almost all students. However, students in both schools considered composting and waste reduction as less important than recycling and thereby did not fully agree with sustainable waste management. The paper by Álvarez-García and his colleagues examines the existing evidence from studies evaluating and analysing the relationship between environmental education, including environmental competences and pre-service primary school teacher training. The literature review performed included 24 documents (22 peer reviewed journal articles and two doctoral theses). The strategy followed consisted in locating documents by a reliable search strategy; establishing the criteria for the selection of documents to analyse from the documents located and rigorously analysing the documents selected based on clear and precise criteria and dimensions. In general terms, the literature review analysis has emphasised the lack of environmental competences amongst pre-service teacher students and the gaps in the teacher training curriculums regarding environmental education. The overall scarcity of research in this area affirms the need for strengthening the evidence base. The paper by Ortega and Fuentes states that research on teacher training often focuses on learnersí perceptions of that training. The focus of this paper, which uses a research-to-practice approach, is instead on the views of the trainers. It evaluates the perceptions of university lecturers teaching classes as part of primary teachersí training degrees and assesses their views of the communication skills developed by their students to be used in their future careers. The study uses a 17-item ad-hoc questionnaire, com- pleted by 152 lecturers from the University of Granada. Descriptive and inferential analyses are then carried out on the data collected using SPSS. The analysis results show how important lecturers believe it is for trainee teachers to develop communication skills, which they often lack. Although lecturers believe communication skills are very important, they also think that they are not developed as much as they should be in their classes, so trainee teachers cannot communicate as effectively as they should. The paper by Nurmilaakso acknowledges that, over the last decades, the nature and form of what children can choose to read has changed radically, partly as a con- sequence of rapid technological advances and the increasing dominance of the image, and focuses on how children can support their learning to write and read by computer in the early years of school. Finally, Patrick Howard ñ the author of one of the papers published in this issue of the Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability ñ wrote about his photo titled ìNurse Logî, which is the cover photo of the printed journal, ìIt inspires me to think about the perfect closed system, the fallen tree provides a complex and dynamic ecological niche for growth and re-generation. May we find more ways to mimic nature in this perfect, closed loop of sustainability!î Editor-in-chief Dr AstrÓda Skrinda . DOI: 10.1515/jtes-2015-0001 Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 5ñ22, 2015 The Dispositions, Abilities and Behaviours (DAB) Framework for Profiling Learnersí Sustainability Competencies in Higher Education Frida Besong and Charlotte Holland Dublin City University, Ireland Abstract The concepts of sustainability and sustainability competence are controversial, complex, difficult to define and measure, and have varied meanings for different people and practices. Given the complex nature of sustainability, there is limited availability of paradigmatic frameworks to guide educators in assessing sustainability competencies. This paper introduces the Dispositions, Abilities and Behaviours (DAB) framework, which influenced the design of an intervention in 2013ñ2014 that profiled sustainability competencies among final year undergraduate students in a higher education institution. The results of the mixed methods study indicate that the DAB framework has good potential as a guide to educators or researchers in understanding and profiling sustain- ability-related abilities, attitudes and actions (areas of performance) of cohorts of students within higher education settings. Keywords: higher education, sustainability, sustainability competencies, dispositions, abilities, behaviours Profiling Sustainability Competencies The purpose of