The call for papers asked to cast “a critical eye on the practice and purpose of sustainability-focused education, and its successes and failures, thus far”. We approach this task in this paper through two lenses that have not yet been very visible in the education for sustainable development (ESD) discourse. One is the lens of disability studies which is the inquiry around the lived reality of disabled people; the other is the lens of ability studies which among others investigates (a) which abilities are seen as essential in a given context; (b) the dynamic of how an ability expectation consensus is reached, if it is reached and (c) the impact of ability expectations. We conclude that (a) no consensus has been reached within ESD discourses as to the process of how to identify essential abilities and as to a list of abilities seen as important and (b) that disabled people are invisible in the formal and informal ESD discourse. We expect the paper to be of interest to disabled people, ESD scholars, teachers of ESD in different educational settings, students of ESD training, NGOs involved in ESD as well as policy makers involved in ESD

Brigid Burke and Gregor Wolbring employ favouritism for abilities and ableism lens and the BIAS FREE Framework as two tools to analyse different education initiatives (Education for All, Education for Sustainable Development, Education for Human Rights, Inclusive Education and Adult Education initiatives). They conclude that whereas these initiatives are fragmented, the underlying abilities favoured by the initiatives are complementary and should be combined to increase their potency, which in turn would support the building of a holistic, equitable approach to education to which people are entitled by their human rights.

This article draws on ethnographic data from a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gym to describe “social calibration” as ongoing interstitial work through which actors assess expectations of intensity and adjust their behaviors and dispositions accordingly. It explores two intensity breaches at the gym: “spazzing out” and not “being mean” enough. Using a microsociological lens, it analyses gym members' understandings of, and reactions to, these breaches. This study provides theoretical insight into micro‐interactional processes of social calibration used to negotiate and align intensity levels with prevailing norms, and shows how through these processes practitioners transgress or reinforce gendered expectations. A video abstract is available at: https://bit.ly/Burke2022.