This special issue collates a range of papers from the diverse contexts and forms of work based and vocational education to help review the progress we are making towards the sustainable development goals and to pinpoint future possibilities. The original call identified a range of suggestions including topics such as:

•How to integrate responsibility, ethics and sustainability into work-based higher and/or vocational forms of education or reflective practices.

•Infusing responsibility, ethics and sustainability into reflective practices.

•Innovative pedagogies of work based learning which promote humanistic and holistic forms of learning, or which promote the interrelatedness of humans to other people and/or the planet.

•The challenges, tensions, dilemmas or integrating responsibility, ethics and sustainability into work-based higher and/or vocational forms of education or reflective practices.

•How work based learning can stimulate changes within educational or other organisational settings, or facilitate transformational change.