Actionable companion · School leadership and instructional improvement

From leadership research to district action: Unveiling the role of higher education institutions in regional sustainability transitions: a systematic literature review and research agenda

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: review-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

Abstract Due to pressing sustainability challenges, our society is in urgent need for innovations and new knowledge. Higher education institutions (HEIs) as institutions of education and knowledge production are attributed a leading role in the sustainability endeavor. In recent years, the topic of the contributions of HEIs to regional sustainability transitions (RST) has received increasing attention, resulting in rising numbers of literature published. However, due to its position at the interface of different research fields, the knowledge on the role of HEIs in RST is heterogeneous and scattered. This paper provides a systematic review of the literature on HEIs’ role in RST from 2007 onwards. The purpose of the paper is to identify how this role is conceptualized and empirically investigated and to understand better which challenges HEIs are facing and what kinds of drivers enable them to take over this role. The results are aligned along with role characteristics (actors, activities, drivers, challenges, and impacts), which provide in-depth insights into how this role is conceptualized. The authors deduced one role of HEIs in RST with three dimensions from the existing literature: Sustainable Regional Operations, Community Empowerment, and Regional Sustainability Policy. HEI students, faculty, leadership and management as well as a diverse range of regional actors are engaged in the enactment of this role and its three dimensions through educational, research, and outreach activities. However, these activities are rarely institutionalized and therefore depend on the engagement of individuals and the support of the HEI leadership. Based on these results, the authors propose further avenues of research which have the potential to better characterize the role of HEIs in RST including the perspective of who decides within HEIs on the role and the evolution of this role over time. Keywords: University roles, Regional sustainability transitions, Role theory, Systematic literature review, University-community engagement

A 90-day district inquiry

1. Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
2. Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
3. Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
4. Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Ines Hinterleitner; Gesa Pflitsch; Marianne Penker; Sabine Sedlacek; Verena Radinger-Peer. Unveiling the role of higher education institutions in regional sustainability transitions: a systematic literature review and research agenda. Sustainability Science (2025-09-04). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-025-01736-1

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.