Prof. Dr. Pascal Frank

Prof. Dr. Pascal Frank

After his employment for the German Environment Agency, where he build up an international academy for transdisciplinary learning and collaboration on sustainability-related topics, he has been working since 2023 as an assistant professor at the Education and Learning Sciences group of Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands.

In his professorship in ‘Teaching and learning for the development and unfolding of human potential for sustainability’ a major focus of his work lies on Inner Development Goals (IDGs). IDGs have been introduced as a set of desirable development goals complementing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. On the one hand, they describe the skills and competencies that individuals need to contribute to sustainable development. On the other hand, IDGs can be interpreted as an inner manifestation of external sustainability. Pascal’s work is concerned with IDGs in three ways.

First, he aims to identify the intrapersonal challenges individuals face when engaging with sustainability and the intrapersonal competencies they apply to overcome these challenges.

Second, he looks at learning activities that allow individuals to cultivate these competencies.

Third, he is interested in ways of assessing these learning activities and intrapersonal competence development. In his work, he primarily applies qualitative and thick-phenomenological methods for his research. Overall, Pascal aims to establish IDGs as an important learning outcome of formal training and education and support actors who seek to integrate IDGs into their work.

He is driven by the intention to enable individuals to overcome barriers of acting in a more sustainable way. He interprets research and education as a means to achieve this purpose. More specifically, he is interested in understanding how outer challenges translate into inner, affective-motivational challenges for the individual. In response, Pascal aims to identify intrapersonal sustainability competencies and inquire into learning activities cultivating these competencies.

In his teaching, he draws upon his research findings and designs experiential learning landscapes in which learners can systematically observe and transform inner worlds.

In addition to his academic work, Pascal is a certified systematic transformation consultant, Iyengar Yoga Teacher, and Mindful Self-Compassion Teacher, as well as a movement practitioner.