In 2015, 193 member states of the United Nations unanimously adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), representing a ‘new global agenda to end poverty by 2030 and pursue a sustainable future for all’. Since that time, SDGs have come ever more to the fore of both considered educational thought and practice in schools.

Our ‘In conversation with...’ piece in this issue is with Scott Strachan, an engineer, whose team has twice won the coveted UK & Ireland Green Gown Award for sustainable education. In his article, Paul Tyler helps set the scene by re‐introducing the essential concepts and nature of the UN SDGs.

Activities linking directly to SDGs are also top of the agenda in the article by Andy Markwick and Shonagh McManus who recount an active teaching sequence helping children understand better the plight of rural communities in Bangladesh, where the population regularly faces dreadful flooding caused by climate change.

Shweta Bahri and Keya Lamba, co‐founders of the ‘Earth Warriors’ initiative, then go on to offer sound insight into the role climate education can play in helping achieve SDG targets in the classroom. In a final article in this vein, Matthew Knight showcases aquaponics and how this relates to sustainability and climate education, showing how the science can be replicated in both a small and large scale in the classroom.

Digital gaming, volcanoes and poetry are not subjects that you would probably expect to find in an issue about SDGs. However, education for sustainability often requires creative and imaginative approaches – often cross‐curricular in nature – to pass on important socio‐scientific messages. So it is with the final three articles by Laura Hobbs & Sarah Behenna, staff and students of the University of the West of England, and Rania Gikopoulou & Vesileios Axiomakaros.