Abstract
Abstract Society is currently facing profound global challenges, including environmental degradation, food insecurity, and poverty, underscoring the critical role of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are instrumental in fostering sustainable societies, recognizing their responsibility to prepare future leaders, decision-makers, and academics. Over the past three decades, ESD learning outcomes have increasingly prioritized the development of sustainability competences across cognitive, functional, ethical, and personal dimensions. This shift emphasizes equipping students with the requisite knowledge, values, skills, and attitudes to address complex sustainability issues. The objective of this study is to conduct a systematic bibliometric review of the evolutionary trajectory of ESD research. The novelty of this research lies in applying the PRISMA framework coupled with text-mining-based topic modeling. The research gap was identified as the limited connection between specific pedagogical approaches and the measurable development of sustainability competences. Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), the analysis reveals that the conceptualization of ESD has evolved alongside advances in sustainability competences and the integration of diverse pedagogical approaches. The results of the investigation delineated four primary, interconnected research themes: the university ecosystem, competences development, the implementation of pedagogical approaches, and disciplines specificities. Despite their theoretical interconnectedness, our findings indicate a notable gap in the current literature regarding the concrete intersection of specific pedagogical approaches and the development of sustainability competences. This limited integrated research highlights a critical area for future research to better align teaching methodologies with sustainability learning outcomes.