Conference Agenda

Sustainability education researchers have argued for a pedagogy aiming at fostering students' action competence. Teaching action-oriented knowledge brings about didactical challenges as it involves the ability to shape students’ experiences through designing student learning processes and the environment as transformative learning.

This paper addresses the didactical work and student responses based on a pedagogical experiment, and it analyses the pedagogical and educational challenges that arise from putting such principles into work. The research is based on a recent experiment in a humanistic master program at a Danish PBL University.

The educational intentions were - among others - to create a framework for students to recognize themselves as value-conscious actors, as designers for learning and changing processes. The experiment involved interdisciplinary collaboration with students and faculty from Applied Philosophy and the department of Student Entrepreneurship.

The paper evaluates and analyses how students’ outcome and engagement is related to their conceptualization of sustainability, assessment of the course, and professional significance in the subject. In short, how they create meaning of their experiences based on empirical data from papers written by the students; student evaluations; questionnaires and focus group interviews.

The research indicates that students and lectures found sustainability to be a complex issue to address as it involves habits, power relations, cultural as well as ethical issues, etc. Actions to support sustainable development can be both contradictory and have unintended consequences and the interconnected nature of the challenges and issues calls for external collaboration to accomplish sustainable solutions. To address this complexity, the experiment included student’s practice /internship experiences to support their development of action competence. It was compulsory for the students to create a design, which explicitly addressed sustainability issues based on their internship. Students design served as an assessment criterion for their examination.

The students investigated and reflected on the difference they experienced between the “exposed theories” about sustainability and “theory in use” at the workplace. They selected this gap as a starting point and chose primarily to incorporate design strategies aimed to motivate employees and/or managers to develop their interest and engagement in change processes. Student designs often mirrored theories and experiments they had experienced in class.

The research is informed by critical-constructivist didactics (Klafki) and by pragmatism (Dewey and Mezirow). They emphasize, from different perspectives, the educational and didactical impact of content selection, students' experiential actions and reflections, which together may contribute to the fostering of sustainability education ideals. Klafki’s educational philosophy has a clear democratic and critical approach: For Bildung to take place, the acquisition of knowledge and subsequent problem solving concerning the object must involve student engagement and active opening and its being opened for a content in the Klakian sense. ( Klafki, W. (2002).

Action Competence Approach´ frames an ideal approach to students Bildung because students must be able, willing, and qualified to act. ( Mogensen, F., & Schnack, K. (2010)( Breiting, S. & Schnack, K. (2009) Especially willingness to act is a challenge to address within higher education, as students are primarily expected to focus on gaining skills and measurable qualifications.

The development of action competence cannot be reduced to a cognitive dimension of knowledge as emotions are involved in creating a desire to change conditions (Katrien Van Poeck et.other 2023) (Lund, B. 2017) (Lund, B. 2021). Thus, from an ethical and didactical point of view, developing sustainable action competence is open to criticism, as will act implies transformative learning processes with the risk of ruining student’s self-determination.

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is becoming increasingly important as a response to the urgent societal and environmental problems the world is facing. ESD is considered as a holistic concept as complex issues can only be effectively addressed by integrating multiple perspectives and relationships (Mogren et al., 2018; UNESCO, 2014). Recognizing this, UNESCO (2020) recommends a whole school approach (WSA), which is a way for schools to transform their practice towards ESD (Shallcross & Robinson, 2008).

Students cannot just learn about sustainable development, they should get to experience and take part in concrete and authentic actions for sustainability (Sinakou et al., 2019). By improving students' own environments, the WSA aims to enhance students' learning about societal needs (Mogren et al., 2018). Because of this there should be an action-oriented approach to ESD, where students get experiences with performing concrete actions to contribute to solutions to concrete and authentic, local sustainability issues through the ESD teaching at their schools (Sinakou et al., 2019).

Schools are responsible for empowering students to address the world's extensive and complex societal challenges. Consequently, ESD provide students opportunities to develop their action competence for sustainability (Sass et al., 2020). There are many interpretations of what action competence is (Sass et al., 2020). In their definition, Sass et al. (2020) argue that action competence consists of three main elements: 1) Knowledge of the problem and its action possibilities, 2) Confidence in one’s own influence, and 3) Willingness to act. For students to develop action competence around sustainable issues, they should be allowed to take responsibility for their own learning and tackle sustainable development problems (Sinakou et al., 2019).

In the face of difficulties, people have little motivation to act if they do not believe they can perform the task, or if they believe the task will not yield the desired result (Sass et al., 2020). Thus, the experience of participating and having an impact at school and in society can help students develop action competence. This was supported by Torsdottir et al. (In manuscript) who found that student participation and influence can be important for developing action competence. However, their research looked at student participation as a way of influencing within the school setting, and not on how students school experiences in participating in society can help students develop action competence.

Although the literature suggests that an action-oriented approach can help students develop action competence, few studies have focused on this aspect of the teaching when measuring action competence as a outcome of ESD (e.g. Olsson et al., 2022). Because of the importance of action-oriented approaches to ESD, the current study focuses on an action-oriented approach with students getting experiences in influencing society. For small children this should be about actions towards their schools or schoolyards, but as they get older they can take a more active role in society (Chawla & Cushing, 2007). Chawla and Cushing (2007) argue that teaching is not only about how to teach young people to act favorably to the environment, but also how to teach them to do it in an effective and strategic way. Strategic actions can be pressuring businesses or municipality departments to become more environmentally friendly, as that has a much larger effect that what you can contribute through private actions. Due to this, the current study will focus on one part of action-orientation, namely school experiences in influencing society.

The research question is:

What is the relationship between students’ school experiences in participating in society and their self-perceived action competence for sustainability?

The decline of insect biodiversity is a current environmental issue, which is also highly relevant for education. The observed rapid decline is alarming, due to insects’ critical role for the functioning of most ecosystems (Sánchez-Bayo & Wyckhuys, 2019). The decline affects humans directly through ecosystem services provided by insects, such as pollination. Despite several ongoing initiatives, we have not solved the problem of insect declines yet and urgent calls persist to educate a broad public about these declines and to engage people in taking actions that sustain insect biodiversity (Cardoso et al., 2020). Mitigating insect decline is key to reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Educating about insect declines and about ways to sustain insect biodiversity is therefore highly important for environmental education and education for sustainable development.

Unfortunately, social and educational research in the field of insect conservation is limited (Knapp et al., 2021; Ruck & Mannion, 2021), despite several ongoing initiatives to support pollinating insects. Existing research does not consider the complexity of the problem and the diversity of insects sufficiently, but focus often on specific groups of pollinators such as honeybees (Schönfelder & Bogner, 2018). In particular, we lack educational research on learners’ competences to support insects, and research on how these competences develop through education. However, such research is paramount to provide evidence for the design and advancement of educational settings in formal and informal environmental education.

The framework of Action Competence could provide a promising way forward for educational research and for the design of approaches focusing on individual competences. The idea of Action competence origins from the fields of environmental and health education (Jensen & Schnack, 1997) and describes peoples’ ability to act toward solving controversial problems. It combines the three dimensions of action-oriented knowledge, the confidence to take actions, and the willingness to take actions. Action competence was recently applied to the issue of sustainable development (Sass et al., 2020), which fits well to sustaining insect biodiversity as an integral part for achieving a sustainable future. However, the existing action competence framework is more general in its focus and has not been applied to the specific topic of sustaining insect biodiversity before.

Therefore, the presented educational research project aims to apply this idea of action competence to the issue of sustaining insect biodiversity, and eventually investigate and foster learners’ competences to take actions. The project includes four interrelated research objectives (RO); (1) the development of a theoretical framework of action competence for insect conservation; (2) the development of research instruments to investigate the self-perceived action competence; (3) the design of an intervention to foster learners’ action competence; and (4) the investigation of changes of the self-perceived action competence through the designed intervention. The presentation at ECER will provide a short overview on the results from all four objectives, with a focus on RO (3) and (4).

Today’s climate changed world is marked by gender, racial and global inequalities whereby the least responsible for climate change are often the most negatively impacted. Global justice issues involve questions about “common but differentiated responsibilities” (UNFCCC, 2015) for the future of the globe and raise implications for classroom practice. UNSDG target 4.7 and the national curriculum in Sweden call for teaching of global justice issues (GJI) in ways that explicitly take-up ethical issues and that support action for structural change. Despite a general policy consensus on the importance of supporting students to deeply consider ethical and political concerns around responsibilities, there is a lack of sustained research about how teachers can engage with ethical issues of systemic inequalities in day-to-day practice in classrooms. An approach informed by decolonial perspectives (Mignolo, 2011; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018) provides theoretical and conceptual resources to make visible how educational initiatives can unintentionally reproduce the unequal power relations at the heart of the GJI. Applied pedagogically, researchers suggest decolonial frameworks can support teachers to engage critical perspectives in their framing of and didactic treatment of GJIs (Andreotti, 2014; Stein & Andreotti, 2021). However, introducing critical perspectives that directly address colonial imbalances of power in formal educational contexts also raises tensions between (normative) demands for a break with existing processes sustaining structural inequalities and unsustainable lifestyles on the one hand, and curriculum calls for objectivity and pluralistic participative approaches on the other. Engaging ethically with complex GJI, and unpacking how these are framed, studied, and solved takes time and requires a fundamental rethink of education. How/can decolonial praxis support teachers to navigate the tensions between critical and normative perspectives and a concern with balanced perspectives or plurality of perspectives in the curriculum? Building from the established expertise in pluralistic and decolonial approaches, our new project A decolonial approach to teaching global justice issues (DecoPrax 2022-2026) engages these tensions as pedagogical imperatives. DecoPrax connects teachers’ practice to emerging scholarship informed by decolonial theory in intersections of critical global citizenship and environmental and sustainability education. Working with teachers who are interested in exploring decolonial praxis, our project aim is to explore, design, and co-create with teachers an educational framework informed by decolonial perspectives and rooted in the lived realities of classrooms. Our project will work with a group of 16 upper secondary teachers over three years. We will be engaging the group with workshops on decolonial concepts and pedagogy, visiting classrooms to observe and capture teacher reflections on applying decolonial praxis, and co-developing a resource. In order to set up the workshops and to gain insight into the context of practice, the first stage of the project seeks to identify possibilities and areas of constraints in curriculum and institutional contexts, and this is the focus of our ECER 2023 paper. Specifically, this paper explores: What are teachers’ institutional possibilities and barriers related to taking on a decolonial (critical) approach to GJI?

The future is without doubt uncertain and in change. It does not yet exist, but it can be imagined. Children and young people are in the midst of the global crisis. Holden &Linderud (2021) addresses the idea of sustainable development and emphazise that the idea exists as notions in our heads. As humans we cannot physically touch the idea of a just and sustainable world, but we have the opportunity to imagine it, to work together on this idea through joint work on common problems (ibid). Learning how to deal with complex problems requires creativity and compassion, and the ability to imagine a tomorrow (Häggström & Schmidt, 2021). The present turbulent condition impels us to advance pedagogical theories and practices to inspire, encourage and prepare students to become active and engaged participants in future societies. Accordingly, education must be transformative and involve critical-thinking and integrate self-reflection

into the learning process, and embolden students to reflect on their values, behavior, and attitudes (Mezirow, 2000). Such learning involves the social, emotional, cognitive dimensions of a person’s abilities (Illeris, 2014). Transformative learning is hard and laborious, even grueling. Students will therefore be “forced” to challenge their comfort zone such as mainstream thinking and discourses. This comprises the consequences of globalization and related social and environmental problems, changes in human interaction, and how we create knowledge (Wals, Stevenson, Brody, & Dillon, 2013). It has been argued that transformative learning needs to be integrated in education that builds on future literacy (Häggström & Schmidt, 2021). What kind of educational approach and teaching methods may entail creativity, compassion, and abilities to envision an alternative future and at the same time prepare students to engage in transformative learning processes? During our presentation we will discuss a 60 years old cross-curricular approach that may do so.

The purpose of this research is to discuss the role of storytelling in storyline working with sustainability issues. We discuss how future literacy can help develop students' imaginations about a different future through storyline dramaturgy.

• In what ways are the Storyline events enabling education for sustainable development?
• In what way is Futures literacy providing a framework for transformative learning through the Storyline approach?

We have adopted futures literacy as a pedagogical framework, to discuss the interdisciplinary teaching and learning approach Storyline. Futures literacy (FL) as we comprehend it, is about imagining what the future can be, and the role the future plays in what we see and do not see, and in our actions. Anticipation is crucial for imagining, Miller (2018) points out. The form the future takes in the present is anticipation, he claims (Ibid, p. 2). Therefore, FL relies on an individual’s ability to both anticipate and imagine. The abilities to imagine and anticipate are entangled. The ability to fantasize is one of the driving forces to develop FL (Häggström & Schmidt, 2021). Key concepts for imagining different future scenarios are innovation, improvisation, and exploratory approaches. In our study, we will link these concepts to the features of the Storyline approach. We will examine students’ opportunities to discover, invent and construct an alternative world and future. Also, drawing on Liveley, Slocombe,

and Spiers (2021), who argue that FL should utilize the perceptions of narrative to reach its full emancipatory potential, we will examine the role of dramaturgy in a Storyline. Humans understand the world and human’s place in it through narratives and stories, and future scenarios and strategies are narrative fictions (ibid). Through narrative, a higher mode of FL can be achieved. This requires “not only looking at the future but also looking at how we look at the future” (Liveley et al., 2021, p. 8).

In education in general, and education for sustainability specifically, the future is always embedded, as education continually has explicit and implicit ideas about which citizens are educated for which future society. Combined with the great need for change and transition that the sustainability challenges require, it may come as a surprise that anticipatory competence is not a major focus in both Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) research and educational practice. Everyone has been taught history, but quite few have been taught visions of the future, strategic foresight or critically utopian horizons (Bengston, 2016).

In my research on the development of ESE primary schools in the welfare state of Denmark, I have asked school management, teachers and students which kind of school they dream of, and what the school of the future should look like in their opinion. Furthermore, I have done future workshops at the school with the school's stakeholders to qualify more collective answers about which school they dream of and can envision. With this material, this paper examines the questions:

Which utopian ideas about school do the stakeholders at three ESE schools have?
Which perspectives provide the answers in relation to working with anticipatory competence and critical utopian horizons in school development and ESE pedagogy?

The concept of utopia in this presentation leans on Ruth Levitas' (Levitas, 2011) broad definition of utopia as "The desire for a different, better way of being" (Levitas, 2011, p. 209) and her emphasis that utopian notions are always contextual and that there is therefore no universal utopia. In continuation of Levitas, it is also interesting to look at Lisa Garforth's work with modern green utopias and how the understanding of utopias also has a critical dimension that has the potential to become transformative and transgressive (Garforth, 2017).

As a framework, the project is also inspired by critical Utopian Action Research (CUAR), which explains that by 'critical utopian horizons' is meant social imagination based on everyday experiences and utopian thinking without reducing the importance of a critical perspective (Egmose et al., 2020; Nielsen, 2016; Tofteng & Husted, 2014). Thus, the underlying critical dimensions that lie in a utopian notion and which also lie in the future workshop method used for empirical collection are emphasized.

The utopian ideas about school have perspectives for the development of ESE schools and perspectives in relation to educational work with future ideas. In an ESE perspective, the need for qualification of future imagination as a skill or competence is formulated in several places, not least in UNESCO's ten key competencies for sustainable development: "Anticipatory competence: the abilities to understand and evaluate multiple futures – possible, probable and desirable; to create one's own visions for the future" (UNESCO, 2017, p. 10). Thus, qualifying this is a didactic pedagogical task for the field of ESE.

Another direct pedagogical/didactic education-oriented view of anticipatory imagination can be found in Keri Facer (Facer, 2018), who criticizes future imagination in education for either thinking too rationally and without imagination, thereby embedding today's hopes and worries too concretely, or with too nearly- excessive hopes for education to solve all the problems of the future and thereby displace uncertainties (Facer, 2018). Facer argues that the understanding of future imagination in education must rest on a pedagogy of today, which understands itself as an ecotone, i.e., an ecologically fertile intermediate zone between past and future. Facer argues that school should not be a preparation for "known futures", but a space of opportunity and a laboratory for new opportunities and new futures.

In Western countries, citizens spend a significant part of their life embedded in an educational system. Educational systems present facts and structures explicitly by WHAT is taught and assessed, and implicitly by HOW it is taught and assessed. Hence, education affects citizens’ perceptions of societal values in terms of both knowledge and behavior. Consequently, education can be expected to have homogenizing effects on citizens. Depending on WHAT and HOW we teach and assess, diversity in knowledge, values, and attitudes can either be acknowledged and embraced, or silenced and rejected.

In times of sustainability crisis, education has been identified as a key component to solve environmental and sustainability challenges. Education for Sustainability (ES) and Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) acknowledge educational systems’ potential to prepare citizens, and aim at fostering responsible citizens that act for sustainable futures (Eilks et al., 2019; Niebert, 2018). To pursue sustainability - the mitigation of environmental impact to ensure the prevailing of a viable and livable planet Earth for all living organisms (human and non-human) - demands radical societal change in Western countries. Economies and lifestyles must be adjusted (Niebert, 2019, and this in ways that decenter us humans to make room for more relational approaches to planet earth and its inhabitants (UNESCO, 2021). For this adjustment of economies and lifestyles, citizens must perceive change and diverse views as valued in society. Educational systems must ensure not to reproduce, but to reconstruct, societies to enable transformation (Wals, 2022). Students and teachers must be invited to contribute to the diversity of solutions as knowledge producers rather than being presented with homogenizing one-fits-all solutions.

I intend to stimulate awareness of and attentiveness to diverse views on sustainability in educational research. My focus concerns the diversity of applications and understandings of the concepts, ES and ESE, in peer reviewed educational research literature. A diversity with spatial, temporal, and cultural dimensions, and a concept with economical, ecological, and social dimensions. In Western countries, tensions between the economic dimension, and the ecological and societal dimensions have far-reaching consequences, not least on which views are amplified and which may be muffled. While economic forces ask for effectivization, ecological and social dimensions demand a slowdown of economy. A slowing down necessary to discover and explore alternative paths in a complex world. A complexity that must not be simplified for the sake of effectivization, but that should be embraced to explore diverse routes to sustainable futures (UNESCO 2021). Hence, I explore how the economically-dependent research machinery (cf., Savat & Thompson, 2015) affects the pace of ES/ESE research, and thereby our openness for true change in the worst-case causing diversity loss in ES/ ESE discourse. An unintended loss of alternative views that could cloud our judgement of how to act towards sustainability.

With my critical analysis of the ES/ESE discourse in the peer-reviewed literature, I intend to further stimulate discussions regarding educational systems’ purpose and ability to prepare students for our journey towards sustainability. A matured discourse that has and still tends to evolve around dichotomies like instrumental - emancipatory (e.g., Wals, 2011), alternatively qualification – citizenship (e.g. (Bauer, 2003; Hansen & Phelan, 2019; Willbergh, 2015). Human-centered dichotomies questioned by researchers that take more critical posthuman perspectives on ES/ESE (e.g. Lysgaard 2019). Recently, the diversity of perspectives on ES/ESE has taken a leap. This development led me to ask the following questions:

What strands of ES/ESE discourse are represented in western peer-reviewed educational research literature? How does ES/ESE research utilize these diverse views, are there tensions or co-actions?

Introduction & Policy Context

Many practitioners and educators in Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) provide opportunities for learning in outdoor environments. The links are being made between the theoretical and practice traditions of ‘outdoor education’ (OE), ‘outdoor learning, (OL), ‘out-of-school learning’ (OSL), and LoTC (Learning outside the Classroom LoTC) (see Dyment and Potter 2015, Hill et al 2021). Some particular forms of science education, geography fieldwork and play in early years are in some countries seen as more directly relevant to ESE. However, outdoor provision can also include subjects such as mathematics, art, literacy and history with potential links to ESE as a cross-curricular form. As the terms ‘outdoor learning’ and ‘outdoor play’ gain in use internationally, we need surveys of provision to understand links between OL and ESE, and if there is change over time.

In Scotland, we have had over a decade since the publication of Curriculum for Excellence through Outdoor Learning (2010). Focusing on ESE, the policy Learning for Sustainability (LfS) positions outdoor learning, sustainable development education, and citizenship education as a three-way ‘entitlement’ for all pupils. Our current study sets out to inform our understanding of the degree of progress towards this outdoor entitlement.

In the Scottish context, the Educational outcomes of Learning for Sustainability: literature review (Christie & Higgins 2020) provide us with valuable summaries of the possible outcomes of LfS provision and a basis for supporting increased provision of OL as part of LfS. Beames and Polack (2019) partly pre-empt findings here. They looked at inspection reports in Scotland (2011 – 2018) wherein OL ‘grounds, local green space or local community during school hours’ appeared in ¾ of primary schools’ inspections.

Literature

Some studies (for example: in Canada, see Asfeldt et al. 2020; in Hungary, Fuz 2018; in England, Prince, 2019; in New Zealand, Hill et al 2020) have sought to conduct empirical research at national and international levels of outdoor learning provision but the links between OL and ESE provision remain somewhat obscured. In Scottish educational settings, access to outdoor learning experiences is defined as an entitlement for all pupils and some studies explore pupil and teacher experience in ESE (see also Mannion et al 2013, Lynch and Mannion 2021, Ruck 2022). Through the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence and other policy drivers such as Learning for Sustainability, there is the requirement that all teachers are able to demonstrate a commitment to taking learning outdoors (Christie et al 2019).

Young people’s own research about outdoor provision and LfS are increasing in scope and criticality. Teach The Future – an amalgam of young people’s environmental groups – have called for the existing commitments to outdoor learning to be fulfilled; they emphasise the need for ‘connection to nature’ and learning about the ‘climate emergency and ecological crisis (Teach the Future 2020). In addition, a Children’s Parliament inquiry (Children’s Parliament, 2022) remind civic bodies that young people have a right to an education that helps them develop respect for the natural environment. They called for all children to have the chance to learn outdoors throughout the school year, learning regularly about climate change and sustainability outside in nature.

Building on previous surveys (2006 and 2014), our current 2022 survey is set to find out to what extent, in what ways OL/OE and ESE provisions are now changing in schools and pre-schools during the global Coronavirus pandemic. Quay et al (2020) question the future of outdoor and environmental education in Covid times and suggests that there is need to embrace the possibilities that increased outdoor learning may bring.

In the face of world-changing threats, including climate change, biodiversity loss and rising global inequality, young people in secondary schools continue to receive a formal curriculum dominated by instruction in discrete academic subjects culminating in high stakes examinations. In this way, students may learn about these issues but cannot seek to address them as agents in their own right. Against the rigid confines of this approach, there is a parallel tradition of schools trying to engage young people in community-based action projects (Öhman & Östman 2019). Empirical studies into the effects of student-led such programmes suggest that they can help to develop young people’s sense of agency, support mental health and develop a wide range of attributes including effective team working, communication skills and resilience (Trott 2021; Bramwell-Lalor et al 2020; Vare 2021). Despite these evident benefits, incorporating such projects into the regular timetable of schools remains extremely difficult. Where examples exist, such as the Extended Project Qualification available to ‘A’ Level (ISCED Level 3) students in England and Wales, they are not usually part of the compulsory education offered in mainstream schools. 

This paper builds on earlier work that investigated the impacts of student-led, community-based projects that were conducted under a European Union-funded programme (Vare 2021). It reports on a study conducted with teachers and students from five secondary schools, one each in Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Spain and Turkey. Rather than focus on the impact of these projects on students, this research looks more deeply into how such projects were actually accommodated within the timetables of the participating schools and the extent to which schools were able to integrate the approach beyond the time-limited, externally-funded programme.

The research objectives therefore were threefold:

1. To identify ways in which student-led projects could be integrated into already full secondary school timetables

1. To gain a critical understanding of how this ‘fitting in’ of projects served the purposes of the school and staff members involved

1. To explore any drawbacks associated with the various strategies adopted by different schools.

Relevance

Late-modern societies are confronted with the task to find a way out of unsustainability which ultimately makes learning a task for society as a whole (UNESCO, 2013; Van Poeck et al., 2018). Educational processes in the context of sustainability and citizenship education are challenging for several reasons. Regarding the contents of learning, complex issues must be communicated, interdisciplinary knowledge must be integrated and uncertainty about the “right way” must be endured. This complexity is potentiated not least through its sociality and perspectivity. The learning subject is politically addressed within the context of education for sustainable development. Enabling learners to participate in society and to take action for sustainable development also means supporting them in their political decision-making.

Theoretical framework

As a cross-curricular educational task, education for sustainable development has to be integrated in all subjects. To achieve this, different didactic approaches can be appropriate. For topics that negotiate the political, economic and social dimensions, a “pluralistic perspective” (Öhman, 2008; Östmann, 2010) is highly connectable. Moreover, reconstructive studies show that promoting co-construction processes of the students and the discursive exchange on different positions in class is more efficient than explicit or implicit moral appeals which are more likely to be rejected by students (Asbrand & Wettstätt, 2014). Learning for sustainability goes beyond the mere transfer of knowledge and focuses on the students as political subjects with their attitudes, ideas and beliefs (Block et al., 2019). Learning as a process of meaning-making (Östman et al., 2019) takes this into consideration. The didactic approach of the so-called “citizenship consciousness” (Lange, 2008) also follows the idea that students’ ideas about political and social reality produce meaning, which enables the individual to orient and act in the world. Learners introduce their ideas into the educational settings, although little is known about the processes that take place to create political meaning around sustainability.

Conceptual framework

Based on the socio-constructivist assumption that dealing with opposing points of view leads to cognitive conflicts and thus further development or reorganization of one's own cognitive structures (Piaget, 1989; Vygotsky, 1978), a seven-week learning unit on "Global transformation as reflected in the region: What should agriculture of the future look like?" was conducted in three political education courses in the upper secondary school and evaluated in an intervention study. One didactic focus was to make the systemic lines of conflict perceptible in their regional relevance (Östman et al., 2019). Therefore, out-of-school meetings with regional actors (local farmers and representatives of an NGO) were integrated to show and discuss conflicting perspectives on the topic.

Research questions

Based on these theoretical assumptions, the question arises which processes of reflection and meaning-making were initiated by the learning unit and to what extent the learners succeed in meaningfully abstracting the concrete experience of the out-of-school encounters in the context of a political and social reality and gaining political insights.

The study should provide answers to the following research questions:

1. Which processes of reflection were initiated by the teaching project and what role do the out-of-school encounters play in this?
2. Which political processes of meaning-making can be reconstructed in the learners' reflections?

Context

Societies around the globe are facing increasingly urgent and rapidly changing sustainability crises such as climate change (IPCC, 2021) and the global loss of biodiversity (IPBES, 2019). Systemic change and radical transformation of sustainable societies is urgently needed if our planet is to remain inhabitable for humanity and if we want to protect the rich diversity of life on Earth (Grin et al., 2010). According to an increasing number of scholars (Leicht et al., 2018; Rieckmann, Mindt & Gardiner, 2017), if we want young people to care about the protection of biodiversity and become effective changemakers who can drive systemic change, they need to develop a diverse range of competences. Many scholars concur that facing these challenges calls for educators to stimulate re-assessment and disruption of current values and norms (Souza, Wals & Jacobi, 2019; Wals, 2020). We cannot succeed at turning biodiversity decline around without changing the worldviews that created and/or acerbated these problems in the first place. Teaching about biodiversity needs to be more than learning the meaning of the concept. Research has shown that knowledge about the loss of biodiversity and other sustainability challenges, does not automatically lead to more pro-conservation behavior (Braun and Dierkes, 2019; Mohamed Ali Khan, 2021). It is necessary for educators to seek more relational ways of teaching in which students form strong bonds with the natural world.

Theoretical framework

Biodiversity

In the context of this study biodiversity is defined as the genetic diversity within species, the diversity between species, the broad range of relationships between life forms and the rich variety of ecosystems on earth (CBD, 2000).

Head-heart-hands model

Researchers in environmental and conservation education (Ardoin et al., 2013; Gifford & Nilsson, 2014) point out that in addition to knowledge and skills, affective learning outcomes such as beliefs, attitudes, values, trust and behavioral intentions, also play an important, albeit complicated, role in stimulating environmentally responsible and pro-conservation behavior. Effective lessons need to incorporate learning objectives in the domains of the head, hearts and hands.

Real life educational encounters with animals

Sobel (1996) argues that one way to foster empathy for nature during childhood is by forming relationships with animals. Melson (2013) explains that “all living animals present perceptually and cognitively rich, multisensory experiences, embodying novelty within recurring patterns of sight, sound, touch, smell and movement” (Melson, 2013, p.107). Zoos are in a unique position to develop biodiversity education programs that provide children with real life educational encounters with animals. Despite the critique zoos get regarding animal welfare concerns, the authors believe that the educational opportunities offered by zoos to enhance the children’s relationship with the natural world should be explored. Today’s zoos consider it a core duty to help children form human-nonhuman animals relationships and understand the importance of protecting biodiversity (EAZA, 2016; Barongi et al., 2015). However, we need to know more about how zoos can contribute to developing children’s understanding of the importance of biodiversity.

This study’s main research question therefore is:

What do children learn with regard to head (knowledge), heart (emotions & values) and hands (skills) during a comprehensive education program about biodiversity and what are the differences between children whose program includes a zoo education lesson and children whose lessons are solely classroom-based?

To be able to answer this question a comprehensive and well-designed interdisciplinary education program about biodiversity was specifically developed for this study through an iterative educational design process that included collaborating researchers, zoo educators, environmental education developers, primary school teachers and primary school children. Subsequently we ran a large-scale study to investigate the learning outcomes.

Policy efforts to increase the institutionalization of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) within national educational systems are often organized within multi-actor networks, consisting of administrative actors, representatives of civil society or educational practitioners (e.g. van Poeck et al. 2014, Nomura/ Abe 2009). They usually use “soft governance instruments” like fostering networks and dialogue or developing joint strategies (Læssøe & Mochizuki, 2015, Feinstein et al. 2013). Because these policy processes are so presuppositional, the involved actors need a high level of expertise regarding the different educational structures within one educational area (e.g. early childhood education, school education). Structures in this context represent rules and resources that can enable or constrain individual action (Giddens 1984). Following the theory of structuration, the dichotomy of agency and structure is criticized and the relationship between them is described as reciprocal and interdependent (ibid.). Translated to the policy processes of ESD this means that individual actors can influence the structures of ESD policies, especially when they are organized within multi-actor networks. At the same time, the structures influence individual actors, although it is not always clear how this is recognized rationally and consciously (Pitton/ McKenzie 2022). To better understand how the process of structuration evolves to scale or mainstream ESD within different educationals system (Mickelsson et al. 2019), it is interesting to look at the micro-politics of actors within one specific multi-actor process in order to analyze how they refer to, construe or deconstrue structures within their educational system (Singer-Brodowski et al. 2020).

One of the basic assumptions within the discourse on policy innovations for sustainability is that reflection processes and reflexivity are needed to deal with complexity and ambivalences (e.g. Feindt/Weiland 2018). Reflection makes it possible to make one's own sectoral and organizational routines explicit and to make the associated routines of action the subject of joint exchange processes. Reflexivity is either described as the ability to cultivate reflections continuously (Singer-Brodowski et al. 2020) or as the systematic repercussions of developments and dynamics in the respective political field on the political initiatives and actors who want to shape this field (Feindt/Weiland 2018). While the first definition highlights the agency-dimension of individual actors, the second definition is more in line with the structures of a respective system and how it influences the actors.

Bringing these theoretical strands together, the main research question of this paper is how policy efforts for ESD within multi-actor networks can influence national education systems and how these processes of structuration are entangled with reflection and reflexivity.

Anthropogenic climate change and environmental crises are the leading challenges of our time (IPCC, 2021). Such challenges have complex spatial and temporal impacts which drive social, education and health inequalities. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1989) protects young people’s rights to express views on matters affecting them, but these tend to go unheard, and youth have few opportunities to be involved in environmental decision-making affecting them (Thew, Middlemiss and Paavola, 2020). Although global youth movements have been at the forefront of climate and environment-focused advocacy, the knowledge and insights of young people are persistently marginalised in research and policy making which responds to climate and environmental crises (Dunlop & Rushton, 2022). Concomitantly, education researchers have recognised that knowledge-focused approaches to climate change and sustainability education are necessary but not sufficient (Cantell et al., 2019). Rousell & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles (2020) have underlined the need for participatory, interdisciplinary, creative and affect-driven approaches, which respond to the social, ethical and political complexities of the climate crisis.

Moving beyond the field of education, change is also needed in relation to environmental decision making. Conventional approaches to dialogue involving publics, policy makers, researchers and other change makers tend to focus on position taking and enabling ‘non-expert’ groups to inform decision makers’ proposals. Such approaches to public dialogue infrequently provide inclusive, varied, and authentic pathways for publics, especially under-represented groups such young people to inform decision making at multiple stages. This research aims to further develop and apply a co-generative approach to public dialogue and policy engagement, rooted in co-authorship which values diversity of experiences, ideas and approaches in response to environmental and climate crises.

To achieve this aim, we examine the role of youth co-authorship and capacity building in the context of environmental education and policy making through two recent projects: (1) The Manifesto project - the British Educational Research Association Manifesto for Education for Environmental Sustainability (Dunlop et al., 2022a) and, (2) The DICEY project - Dialogue in Climate Engineering with Youth, a UKRI/Royal Society of Arts experiment in public dialogue with youth on climate interventions (Rushton & Dunlop, 2022). The Manifesto project aimed to co-create with young people (16–18 years) and teachers, an illustrated manifesto for Education for Environmental Sustainability (EfES) for the four jurisdictions of the U.K. (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales), where teachers and young people articulated a shared vision of what the future of EfES could look like and the Manifesto was launched in November 2021 (Dunlop et al., 2022a). The DICEY project foregrounded youth questions and ideas about climate interventions through a series of online workshops where young people (16-25 years) engaged in activities to generate questions for scientists, subject experts and policy makers and co-authored blogs. These questions were then put to a group of scientists and policy makers for discussion, with young people facilitating the discussion using illustrated question cards. DICEY builds on a previous project, Geo-engineering – a climate of uncertainty?, a project which brought youth from across Europe together to consider technological responses to climate change in policy making, resulting in the co-authorship of a Geo-engineering Youth Guide and Policy Brief (Dunlop et al. 2022b).

Sustainability issues has been described as post-normal, “that facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent” (Block et al., 2018, p. 1425). As such they cannot strictly be understood as scientific but rather ingrained with questions of meaning, value and justice. These post-normal characteristics are also fundamental to the relationship between democracy and sustainable development, as the time and space for the democratic process seems to shrink as the urgency of sustainability issues increases (ibid.). This poses a problem for democratic education in balancing the tension between the present urgency and the possibilities for critical reflections and imagination. One challenge is therefore how teaching in ESE can make space for political subjects and at the same time face (Todd & Säfström, 2008) this urgency and the emotions entangled with the sustainability issues.

One way of approaching this is through education in which students get to participate in the democratic process in schools. Hence, letting political subjects emerge, not to solve the crisis made by others, but to bring in new ways of knowing and being together in and with the world. Through Rancière's (2010) perspective on politics and dissensus the political subject emerges when students make interventions on the established order thereby altering the possible by making present what was before absent or unimaginable.

One way of making space for dissensus can be related to the possibility to re-imagine the future and Amsler & Facer (2017) proposes that one important function for democratic education is to facilitate the capacity for active-creative engagement with the future. The general aim of this study is therefore to investigate if and how environmental and sustainability education (ESE) can stimulate students to re-imagine the futures possible and to discuss its implications/possibilities for democratic education. In this paper we are testing and investigating one, amongst many possible methods of conducting teaching that have the goal to re-imagine the future, namely to use dystopian texts in teaching. According to Löwe & Nilsson Skåve (2020) dystopian texts are considered a suitable way in which teaching can deal with complex social issues of our time and according to Soares (2020 p. 74) as a way “for students to conceive a brave new world”. This brings forth the question – if and then how dystopia can be used to stimulate students to re-imagine the futures possible and make space for dissensus in ESE?

This study’s point of departure is grounded in a didactic research tradition which departs from socio-cultural theory, drawing on a pragmatic and poststructural approach. We make use of a transactional theory where meaning in a situation is created in a two-way reciprocal relationship between humans and the environment through experiences (Garrison et al., 2022), and where the human-text relationship is seen as transactional (Rosenblatt, 1982).

The transactional perspective in this study enablesd the exploration of the relationship between the reading and the emergence of political subjects. The notion of dissensus focused the attention towards the moments in teaching where yet un-imaginable futures awere made possible. Thereby the study’s design enablesd an exploration of if and how imagination and dissensus are made present through encountering dystopian literature.

This paper addresses the paradox in environmental education between the idea of the Anthropocene (Crutzen & Stoermer 2000), which claims human beings are the center of global environmental change, and the idea of post-humanism, which rejects anthropocentrism. We explore how Eastern humanism, and in particular Tu Weiming's (2010) concept of Anthropocosmism, may help to dissolve this paradox and how it can inspire environmental and sustainability education. While agreeing with arguments against seeing humans as the only or primary bearers of value or concern, we also wonder whether, in an era so strongly characterized by human-made environmental destruction, the way out of this crisis should be sought in post-humanist responses that risk diverting attention away from human accountability.
Modern Western humanism typically assumes that such ideas as human nature and humanity have an eternal and immutable metaphysical essence. Since the Enlightenment, ‘rationality’ has been an especially popular candidate for such an essence, which accounts for the widely held assumption that rationality is the aim of human development and is, therefore, the goal of education. Humanism tends to assert that individuals are entirely autonomous from their environment socially, biologically, and physically. Each individual is an atomistic center of consciousness and intentional action (e.g., free will). Humanists are often stridently anthropocentric and presume human beings are dramatically different from, and superior to, other modalities of being and, therefore, have the right to dominate nature, or even destroy it, if useful to their purposes. We agree all of these aspects. However, we also agree with Lindgren and Öhman (2019: p. 1201) when they say ‘humanism has other values that we may not want to abandon’. First, it emphasizes the inherent dignity of human beings, which enables commitment to such liberal values as democracy, freedom, equality, human rights, and social policies emphasizing human education and welfare. Second, the emphasis on effective agency helped free humankind from the control of the supernatural and from those who claim to have the special powers necessary for propitiating its demands. Third, without a species-typical sense of the human (or at least Homo sapiens), how are humans to be held accountable for their effect on the environment? Finally, why only speak of the post-human or post-Homo sapiens? Might we not speak of the post-Canid, post-Arachnid, or post-Serpentes? What is it that legitimizes the otherwise often criticized ‘human exceptionalism’ in this case?
Post-humanists sometimes overlook humanism’s achievements. For post-humanists, terms such as ‘human’ and ‘humanity’ have been shown to be historically shifting concepts subject to dramatic change. Post-humanists also reject anthropocentrism. Meanwhile, whatever sense one may wish to make of ‘humanity’ and ‘culture,’ they can only be understood as entangled with, and dependent upon, a more inclusive ecosystem. Therefore, the domination and destruction of the physical and biological environment is foolhardy. Meanwhile, if not discarded, issues of human agency are undergoing dramatic decentering. As we strongly endorse these kinds of critiques, we explore a possible way to dissolve this paradox between anthropocentric humanism and post-humanism by integrating one participant in the affairs of nature, human beings, with all other modalities of being in an endless course of cosmic care and creativity. We do so by turning to Eastern humanism. In particular, we focus on Tu Weiming’s (2001, 2010) notion of ‘anthropocosmism’ wherein ‘the human is embedded in the cosmic order, rather than an anthropocentric worldview, in which the human is alienated, either by choice or by default, from the natural world’ (Tu 2001: p. 244).

In this paper, we report on children’s lived experiences of being with trees in a school. The children in the school were re-planting their playground to find out why trees are important in the climate crisis as part of a large interdisciplinary project called ‘Voices of the Future’ (Ref # 416424) funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). The project aimed to explore children and young people’s embodied relationship to treescapes (that is, spaces where trees are) in urban and rural settings.

In this talk, we will share reflections from our research encounters with Year 3 /4 children (7 to 8 years old) in a rural primary school in the north of England. The school practices forest school in a small woodland area where children can freely experience direct contact with nature and trees (Malone, 2007). Proximate and regular access to the forest school creates space and possibilities for children’s bodily and sensational engagement with nature, trees, and the more-than-human.

Building on existing practice in the school, we worked with listening as an attending methodology to attend to children’s lived experiences, their multimodal and multisensory stories of being in and moving around trees in the school woodland area. We attend to various ways through which children express their opinions, experiences of being in the area, enabling us to view the school woodland as generating diverse possibilities for children to learn knowledge and skills whilst being in/with trees and woods. To understand the complex interplay between place and experience, we frame our work on “common worlds relations” to position human and more than human as active and affective participants within their encounters (Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2013). By attending to children’s encounters with the woodland as relational events, we offer new possibilities of looking at the interdependence of human and more than human as complicated, relational and entangled with the material world (Horton and Kraftl, 2006).

Our research began with our visits to the school with the purpose of getting to know the children, class teacher, school as a place (i.e., school and the school woodlands) with its materiality. We were keen to involve children as co-researchers (Pahl and Pool, 2021) respecting their status as active beings (Prout, 2005) having embodied and relational voices (Cooper, 2022). Our research aimed to focus on a diverse conceptual understanding of children’s voices, as we recognised that children need to be involved in decision making about climate change literacy and learning programmes (Rousell and Cutter-Makenzie, 2020). Our research encounters with children in their school land, helped us to think critically about the role of a cognitive focused model (Trott and Weinberg, 2020) of knowing and learning about environment, critically interrogating “who should decide what children should learn about trees and their role in tackling climate crisis and how?”. Working with Horton and Kraftl (2006)’s conception of research as a way of inquiring into something new differently in experimental way, we do not intend to produce a coherent account on alternative ways of knowing about trees and environment. Our focus here is to consider how this research lens can enable us to learn and explore about trees, humans, and the more-than-human world in diversified ways.

In attempts and movements to foster a sustainability transition of higher education, there is an inherent ambiguous relation with the current configuration of higher education. On the one hand, the notion of transition implies a radical change of the current regime (i.e. a break away from how the system is currently configured). On the other hand, the current regime can also provide valuable resources and tools to foster more attention for sustainability. For example, many quality assurance frameworks contain opportunities to promote transformative learning for sustainable development (Janssens, Kuppens, Mulà, Staniskiene, & Zimmermann, 2022).

This ambiguity has been briefly addressed and explored in literature on sustainability in higher education in relation to elements of marketization and corporatization of contemporary higher education. Whereas some argue against “compromise, accommodation and incorporation”, stating that practitioners should be more “political in their contestations of institutional practices” (Blewitt, 2013, p. 61) others are more nuanced, pointing at risks, pitfalls and limitations, but also opportunities of using the current regime to instill a change towards a more sustainable university (see e.g. Bessant, 2015; Bessant & Robinson, 2019; Bessant, Robinson, & Ormerod, 2015; Deleye, Van Poeck, & Block, 2019; Maxey, 2009). Maxey (2009), discussing contemporary higher education primarily in terms of the corporate university, states that we should move “beyond a binary framing of sustainability vs. corporatisation” (p.440) and that the way this relationship between sustainability and corporatization is to take shape is ongoing and not yet fixed. Especially in practice this openness is the case, because practice is much more complex than any possible ideological contradictions between sustainability and the way contemporary higher education is structured might make appear (Bessant, 2017).

In this paper, we aim to nourish and further substantiate the scholarly debate on this topic by approaching it as an empirical question: We aim to create detailed empirical knowledge on how exactly this tension is dealt with in practice. We do this by studying how university practitioners in a concrete change practice at an engineering faculty of a Belgian university navigate characteristics of the way the university is structured at the moment. The aim is to provide insights into how such regime characteristics affect how the sustainable university is envisioned and worked out in practice, but also how in turn such change practices might affect (the role of) regime characteristics in turn. Zooming in on one concrete change practice in a case study allows us to not only complement the existing research with detailed empirical insights on the processes of change in relation to existing regime. Such knowledge is also, we would argue, necessary to build up in order to scientifically substantiate the design of change processes in higher education.

This translates into one research question:

How do those involved in a sustainable university change practice – individually and as a collective – negotiate (i.e. recognize, negotiate, use, accept, counter, transform…) the current HE regime.

The object of study (empirical object) is a change practice where professors, lecturers and administrators meet on a regular basis to make the education at their faculty more sustainable, while negotiating institutional expectations of the university.

Critical thinking (CT) has been emphasized as a key competence in education, and one of the most central competences to promote in sustainability education (SE) (EU Commission, 2016; Vare & Scott, 2007). CT is regarded an essential competence to be able to contribute to a sustainable society (Rieckmann, 2017), and considered a vital part in building up students’ action competence for sustainability (Schnack, 1998). In 2007, Vare & Scott pointed to the need to strengthen the focus on CT in SE, and CT as an area of development in education is yet still emphasized (Munkebye & Gericke, 2022; Frønes & Jensen, 2020). Studies have shown that teachers consider CT to be a central aspect of SE, however, there is a need for professional development to further teachers’ abilities to teach CT generally (Hasslöf & Malmberg, 2015; Frønes & Jensen, 2020), and specifically in relation to complex sustainability issues (Munkebye & Gericke, 2022).

CT has been defined in varying ways over time, however, there is a broad consensus that CT includes skills and dispositions (Lai, 2011; Facione, 1990). Skills concern elements such as e.g. analyzing, evaluating and problem-solving, and dispositions include e.g. fairmindedness, openmindedness and desire to be well informed (e.g. Lai, 2011, Facione, 1990). It is also argued that developing those elements is not sufficient; being a critical thinker also includes the concept of criticality, i.e. to exert CT in situations that call for it (Davies & Barnett, 2015). This is of importance when dealing with complex sustainability issues, which brings important implications for SE. Moreover, skills include cognitive components whereas dispositions generally are associated with the affective domain (Facione, 1990). Including dispositions may be important for developing CT that includes ethical considerations.

Sustainability issues are characterized by great complexity and often great uncertainty (Block et al. 2019). To find solutions that simultaneously benefit the environmental, social and economic dimensions that sustainability issues entail are often difficult (Öhman & Öhman, 2012). Vare & Scott (2007) emphasize the need to include activities that allow students to explore the contradictions inherited in sustainability issues. This makes sustainability a fruitful learning context for the development of CT, and equally important, CT becomes one important learning outcome of SE. A large-scale study from Sweden showed that students who experienced teaching that focuses on a multitude of perspectives and critical approaches to these also display a higher level of actions that promote sustainability (Boeve-de Pauw et al., 2015).

Several studies have shown that teachers often pursue an environmental perspective of sustainability, which implies a risk that the complexity is lost (Sund & Gericke, 2020; Borg et al. 2014). The opportunities for developing CT in SE might then be reduced. The study by Munkebye & Gericke (2022) indicated that teachers in Norwegian primary school associate CT to SE. However, both affective elements and interdisciplinary strategies were excluded from their teaching. Possibly, there is a risk that CT is taught without inclusion of ethical perspectives. Studies have found that teachers recognize the importance of CT, but many lack deeper understanding of what CT comprises and they often feel unprepared to teach it (Schulz & FitzPatric, 2016).

Many studies on competences in relation to SE are carried out within higher education. Against this background, the present study aims to identify what skills and dispositions primary school teachers relate to when they reflect on CT. The research is conducted within the CriThiSE-project, which aims to develop teaching of CT within SE. The research questions are:

- How do primary school teachers perceive the concept of CT?

- How do primary school teachers perceive CT in relation to their teaching?

This paper has its origins in a forthcoming book chapter (tentatively entitled ‘Professional development for staff for inspiring ESD’) which will form part of a new edited text about Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in international higher education that, subject to final confirmation with the academic publisher, will be published in 2024. Taken as a whole, the handbook will discuss perspectives on and practices for ESD in universities, examining how ESD can be embedded in all disciplines and departments by way of a ‘whole university approach’. Its chapters will address issues including (but not limited to): what ESD ‘is and means’; interdisciplinarity and staff engagement; whole institution approaches to ESD; ESD in the curriculum; assessment for ESD; leadership and governance; and, support for and evaluation of ESD initiatives.

My own paper will be based on my chapter contribution to this book. The key premise of the paper is: if higher education is to promote and innovate in sustainability, and our aim is to develop authentic sustainable graduates through learning, teaching and the broader student experience, our staff also need to be ‘sustainability literate’ – and enabled, through their own expertise areas, to be advocates for sustainability. Thus, I will problematise and discuss the need for appropriate and diverse ESD-based professional development opportunities for staff in higher education, be they university leaders, researchers, or educators. Key questions are:

• What are the professional development needs of higher education staff, to enable those staff to embed sustainability in their own curricula, teaching and assessment, accounting also for their own diverse disciplinary backgrounds?
• Is professional development for ESD sufficiently catering for all staff? What different professional development needs might specific staff need in order to fulfil their roles in a sustainability-informed way?
• How can we be more inclusive and participatory in our staff development about sustainability, to ensure that all staff perspectives are considered, thereby intersecting equality, diversity and inclusivity (EDI) principles with the development of ESD in our universities?

It will be argued that sustainability is relevant to all staff, and that there needs to be better ‘joining up’ of professional development activities, enabling staff, students and other partners to collaborate in their institutions rather than operating in ‘sustainability silos’. Further, that our professional development about ESD needs to be informed by student perspectives and experiences, utilising, for example, appropriate student partnership models (Cook-Sather et al, 2014).

The work is supported by a range of literature (see sample reference list below) but will make particular reference to the UNESCO Sustainability Development Goals, as well as the (UK) ‘Education for Sustainable Development Guidance’ document (QAA and Advance HE, 2021).

‘Leaving no one behind’ is the core and transformative promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This pledge underscores the significance of education for sustainable development. However, the challenges facing education systems and teachers continue to intensify. For instance, the teaching environment has increasing become heterogenous and multicultural, classrooms have become more diverse, offering educators and institutions both opportunities and challenges, (Al Musawi et al., 2022: 1; Popova et al., 2018: 11; Sarı & Yüce, 2020: 90; Pit-ten Cate et al., 2021: 1). With such a complex combination, maintaining a balance among equity, delivering a fair and excellent education to all, identifying and attending to individual learning needs of learners has made a teacher’s job extremely challenging, (Burns & Van Damme, 2018: 54). The diversified teaching environment also makes teachers struggle to create closeness in relation to the student, in relation to fellow staff, and in relation to knowledge domains and the social situations, (Ramdani et al., 2022: 157; Mengesha, 2022: 1). Sometimes, it creates also frustrations, disharmony and digression in education institutions because providing all students with the skills and competencies required to thrive in education system and beyond means being able to meet their diverse sets of needs, (Cornelissen et al., 2015: 1; Burns & Van Damme, 2018: 57). This raises therefore the question, what is the best way to ensure that all students can succeed both in and outside the educational institutions’ learning environment? Research on pedagogies in innovative learning environments indicate that a first step in better serving all students is to move away from the ideal of homogeneity to consideration of diverse needs of learners in learning and teaching context, (Burns & Van Damme, 2018: 53). In this regard, the importance of relationships, of connections and of care, within learning and teaching environment, have recently come to the fore mainly within higher education institutions as a means to think beyond an uncaring neoliberal, competitive and individualizing education system, (Gravett et al. (2021: 1). Relational pedagogies position meaningful relationships as fundamental to effective learning and teaching and explore ways of fostering connections, authenticity and responsiveness, (Gravett and Winstone 2020). This study focuses therefore on integration of ESD as a relational teaching and learning process. In this conceptualization, the study explores how the theoretical underpinnings of relational pedagogy based on Martin Buber’s understanding of the twofold attitude of human beings toward the world, could be used to recast teachers’ diverse relations and harnessed to integrate ESD in teaching and learning activities. Buber’s twofold dimensions are the I-Thou or I-It relation. According to Buber, the I-Thou is a relation of subject-to-subject, while I-It is a relation of subject-to-object, (Buber, 1937: 3). The twofold dimensions reveal a dialogue, meeting, encounter, and exchange that can exist between human and human or human and non-human entities, (Buber, 1937: 4; Guilherme & Morgan, 2009 566). For Buber, education takes place when there is a relation and without relation education cannot take place, (Biesta, 2012: 584). The research question is: what is the significance of Buber’s theoretical underpinnings of relational pedagogy to the integration of ESD in teaching and learning activities? In other words, how could ESD be integrated in teaching and learning activities in the light of Buber’s relational pedagogical assumptions?

How are universities supporting the development of knowledge, understanding, skills and attitudes required for climate or sustainability action? Do students feel prepared and able to act for a sustainable future after graduation? What is a 'good education' in the context of a changing climate and societal expectations?

This research considers modules and courses from a range of English universities. Reflecting on an international review of literature and practice around competence development for sustainability, the research reports on the knowledge, attitudes, skills and values that participating students and lecturers hope to develop and build. Perceptions of learning gain were captured through both qualitative and quantitative means.

The theoretical framework to the doctoral research that informed this paper centres around action research, Gert Biesta's domains of education and Ulrich Beck's consideration of theories of modernity and democratisation in the context of education and sustainability. Lozano, Merrill, Sammalisto, Ceulemans and Lozano (2017)'s work to establish connections between competence development and pedagogical approaches informed the qualitative investigation as a theory to test against academic practice.

Student voices are typically silent in the academic literature in this area. This research challenged this through interviews, focus groups and a unique questionnaire measuring perceived competence gain. The perspectives of lecturers and university staff offer context for how individual institutions currently or could better support education for sustainability, with additional input from several sustainability leaders nationally.

Education in a post-pandemic university and world features an ever-increasing number of challenges, including a growing awareness of intersecting climate and sustainability crises that are driving many students to demand changes across their time at university. This paper will highlight opportunities and examples of good practice that are relevant to an international audience.

In regard to the discussion on societal transformation towards sustainable development, great importance and expectations are attributed to education of sustainable development (ESD) (Fischer et al., 2022). Particular focus is placed on school education as “an institution play[ing] a leading role in the implementation of sustainable development” (Bertschy et al., 2013, S. 5068). In order to enable the implementation of ESD in schools, the importance of teachers is emphasized. Although ESD-related teacher education is a central prerequisite (Rieckmann, 2020), it is still a niche innovation, as Fischer et al. (2022) state. In designing teacher education on ESD, Bertschy et al. (2013) highlight that both sustainability-related knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge are crucial for building professional action competence. Bürgener and Barth (2018) express a need in practice-based learning opportunities for student teachers and therefore view collaboration with educational practice as essential. The implementation of ESD related to teacher education can be considered on two levels: On the one hand, student teachers should be enabled to implement ESD in schools. On the other hand, teacher education itself represents an implementation of ESD. In this context, the question arises what is to be achieved with ESD. International scientific discourse distinguishes between two approaches (Vare & Scott 2007). ESD 1 assumes that the task of education for sustainable development is to impart knowledge and behavior defined as sustainable (ibid.). In this context, Pauw et al. (2015) warn against instrumentalisation or even indoctrination through educational policy guidelines if a pluralistic and holistic view is not desired. Furthermore, Ideland (2019) considers the danger of subjectification of sustainability, as the responsibility for societal transformation rests on the shoulders of the individual and thus the possibilities for change may even disappear. The emancipatory approach (ESD 2) focuses on a critical examination of issues relevant to sustainability. The complexity and contradictoriness of the social sustainability problem and the uncertainty resulting from it, are particularly taken into account and addressed. Accordingly, sustainable development is not a closed expert discourse, but an open social (learning) process. Education for sustainable development, in the sense of emancipatory ESD, promotes the ability to self-reflect and take responsibility in the social negotiation process (Sterling 2010). In this sense, Vare and Scott (2007) understand sustainable development in itself as a learning process. Ojala (2013) highlights the need to include the emotional level, as dealing with global challenges can be associated with negative feelings and hopelessness. In the context of teacher education, student teachers are therefore initially required to engage with the concept and content of ESD themselves (Rieckmann, 2022). In this light, critical-emancipatory reflection processes play a special role in teacher education. Viewing education for sustainable education itself as a learning process requires the training of teachers as learning facilitators. "This avoids viewing teachers as technicians who deliver predetermined results and instead views them as facilitators of knowledge production and value identification" (Vare, 2022, p. 15).

Looking at the state of research on teacher education in ESD in this regard, Evans et al. (2017) find, based on an international literature review, that while ESD is embedded in schools and curricula in many cases, there are still no requirements for teacher education in most countries. Little progress can be seen here in recent years - this includes European countries (ibid.). A research desideratum is to explore to what extent the required competencies of prospective teachers in the field of ESD are supported by the teaching-learning concepts used (Brandt et al., 2019). According to Evans et al. (2017), there is a lack of critical reflection on the applied teaching-learning concepts and the evaluation of their effectiveness.

Education is widely perceived as having great potential for the transformation towards sustainability (eg. Unesco 2014). It is , however, also seen to be complicit in reproducing historic and systemic violence and our unsustainable status quo (Stein et al 2022). Education needs to be fundamentally rethought and reimagined. Contemporary dominant approaches to educational development that are based on standardisation and curricula have been challenged (Holfelder 2019, Osberg and Biesta 2020). Transformative and transgressive learning have been proposed as generative for higher education (Lotz-Sisitka et al 2015, Ojala 2016).

We, the authors of this paper, have recently been employed to lead educational development and research for sustainability at a technical university. The university is known for their engineering programmes but it also provides education in other fields including science (e.g. physics), architecture, and education. Our activities as educational developers include teaching in different courses on higher education pedagogy, facilitation of workshops, coordination of collegial networks, supporting course and programme development collaborating with teachers, programme directors and university leadership. We also coordinate a new research group on sustainability and education, in which we explore educational development and research for sustainability in a bigger group.

With the aim to inform and inspire other educational developers and researchers and invite a dialogue on how to promote and support transformation for sustainability at universities, we are in this paper exploring and shaping our new roles as educational developers and researchers, learning and becoming in affective relationship with each other, sharing and learning from the pains and pleasures of working with sustainability education at a technical university.

The pleasures and pain comes from working within an influential social context. Technology, the way it is applied today, is seen to be driving social and environmental exploitation (e.g. Barca 2020). At the same time, science and technology is being highly valued in society today and young people are being attracted to education in those fields, e.g. in recruitment programmes reaching out to students from under-represented groups (e.g. women). Decades of research suggest engineering and technology is socially produced in ways associated with masculinity (Ottemo et al. 2020). Engineering is positioned as technical and mathematical, objective, rational, and reductionist, which implies that aspects central to sustainability are neglected or have low status. The pain comes from working within disciplinary structures in which the ill-defined and complex concept of sustainability can be rejected as “fuzzy”. Both of us have a background in engineering, which may help in understanding teachers and students' situations. However, as has been described by Machado de Oliveira (2021), our expertise within social science such as our knowledge in education can be met with arrogance, silencing us and limiting our possibilities of working for change.

In this paper we explore our roles and work as educational developers and researchers supporting and promoting change of university education for sustainability in collaboration with various actors at university. We engage with the following research questions:

1. What emerges in shared learning and affective relationships, among us educational developers and researchers and those we engage with for transformative change in education?

2. What strategies for the work as educational developers for transformative change can be drawn from that which emerges (see 1.)?

3. How can our research approach be used and further evolved for educational development?

All networks hold a meeting during ECER. All interested are welcome.

The study was a part of a bigger research project carried out in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary with the financial support of the International Visegrad Fund. The main aim of the study was to identify opportunities and threats, obstacles and possibilities regarding the integration or strengthening of EG/ESD in teacher education. The project also aimed at developing recommendations to strengthen these initiatives.

In the research project, systemic perspective was adopted as the theoretical framework (Fereira et al. 2019). This approach is founded on several assumptions: (1) The primary research problem is recognised as a system, i.e. a set of identifiable elements connected by mutual relationships; (2) These elements form subsystems within the higher system; (3) The boundaries between the system and its environment are partially permeable; however, they make the identification of the system possible; (4) Each system acts purposefully, while the guiding principle is to maintain the status quo.

The research problem was defined as follows: What factors favour/contribute to or prevent the inclusion of GE in teacher education and training?

In the presentation we will focus on the results from the Polish case study, however we will place them in the Central European / the Visegrad Group context to highilight some commonalities and differences.

In education for sustainable development (ESD), student teachers are considered crucial agents facilitating changes in—and promoting—sustainable development (SD; UNESCO, 2017). Their willingness to implement ESD is essential for the sustainable reconfiguration of institutions and educational processes. The role of (student) teachers in ESD and their preparation for the implementation of ESD is the topic of international concern that attracts more and more attention from educational researchers, practitioners and creators of policy guidelines and recommendations. However, studies focused on examining either student teachers’ intention to implement ESD or identification of factors that shape the same intention are scarce. Therefore, this study focused on student teachers and aimed to examine the factors contributing to their intention to implement ESD in their future professional life.

One of the relevant theories for studying teacher intention to implement ESD is the Norm Activation Model (NAM, Schwartz, 1977; Schwartz & Howard, 1981). NAM’s main assumptions is that individuals will be ready to behave in a certain way only after their personal norm has been activated. To activate personal norm, an individual has to take the responsibility for their actions (a construct named ascription of personal responsibility), and they have to assess whether they are capable to behave in a particular way, which in the education research field represents (teacher) self-efficacy construct.

Therefore, two theoretically supported predictors of intention to implement ESD can be identified: teacher self-efficacy and ascription of personal responsibility for ESD implementation. Furthermore, it seems that there are both theoretical and empirical evidence that these two predictors are interconnected. For example, Lauermann & Karabenick (2011) argue that teachers who accept or take responsibility for certain action (e.g., they believe it is their responsibility to solve certain educational problem), to a larger degree believe in their own abilities to conduct certain activity or action. Responsibility is conceptualized as motivational factor that drives teacher’s decision to behave in the way they find efficient (Lauermann & Karabenick, 2011). Furthermore, the significant relationship between teacher self-efficacy and teacher’s ascription of responsibility was confirmed in empirical studies. For example, while studying the factors that form student teacher’s decisions to implement aspects of multicultural education in their future professional work, Kozel (2007) found that teacher self-efficacy represents one of the key factors, followed by the evaluation of whether certain action or strategy will result in desired learning outcome and the sense of responsibility to solve certain problem or achieve certain outcome. In ESD research field, Vukelić & Rončević (2019) found that ascription of personal responsibility represents a significant predictor of teacher self-efficacy for ESD. Student teachers who ascribe responsibility to solve sustainability and environmental protection issues to themselves to a higher extent, show higher levels of belief that they are competent to implement ESD.

So according to the NAM and aforementioned studies results, even putting them separately, teacher self-efficacy and ascription of responsibility in isolation are both good predictors of teachers' intentions (Kozel, 2007; Schwartz, 1977; Schwartz & Howard, 1981). Therefore, it can be expected that individuals who are both high in self-efficacy and ascription of personal responsibility are inclined to implement ESD. Furthermore, it can be argued the joint effect of teacher self-efficacy and ascription of personal responsibility is instrumental to enhancing teachers' intention to implement ESD.

As teacher self-efficacy and ascription of personal responsibility are both relevant to teachers’ professional activities, it is especially essential to examine how both variables interact with each other to affect teachers’ intention to implement ESD. Thus, this study aimed to investigate how teacher self-efficacy and ascription of personal responsibility (for ESD implementation) interact to affect teachers’ intention to implement ESD.

This study seeks to investigate the experiences of teachers working as ESD-facilitators within a whole school approach project designed to implement education for sustainable development (ESD) in their schools. The program activities included school leaders, teachers, and ESD- facilitators. During a period of three school years, five schools in a municipality in Sweden took part in order to integrate ESD in their organization and teaching practice. The ESD-facilitators took part in the design of the development process, workshop activities and content, and facilitated each school’s internal work. This study aims to identify in what ways ESD-facilitators function as sustainability change agents and how contextual factors might contribute to success or form hindrances in their work.

The project was designed based on teachers’ learning and collaborative and reflexive work (Desimone, 2009). The purpose was to direct the development work of the schools towards a whole school approach (Mogren et al. 2019), meaning that ESD is fully integrated in the local curriculum. The main areas of development were to increase interdisciplinary teaching with focus on ESD as holistic pedagogical idea, and that ESD should permeate the work in all levels of the internal and external organization of the school (Sund & Lysgaard, 2013), implying that the different actors in the school and its societal context (students, teachers, school leaders and the outer society) work towards sustainability (Mogren et al., 2019). An additional aim was to integrate pluralistic approaches in the teachers’ classroom practice.

The project included two project leaders, who also participated as researchers in the project. Together with the school leaders and ESD-facilitators, they took a leading role in the development of the project, which included joint seminars, and meetings between project leaders and a) school leaders (across schools), b) school leaders and facilitators (within schools), and c) facilitators (across schools). The ESD-facilitators were intended to function as a link between school leader, project leaders and the teaching staff. They were supposed to support the teacher work teams in their discussions and implementation work with transforming ESD principles into practice.

A recent study by Van Poeck et al. (2017) explored different change agent roles by mapping the different ways in which change agents actively contribute to sustainability. In relation to different roles, various types of learning is being made possible. The authors identified four types of change agents that position themselves in different ways along the two axes of personal detachment vs. personal involvement, and instrumental vs. open-ended approaches (to change and learning). This study investigates the views and practices of the ESD-facilitators in relation to these two dimensions. Thus, different change agent positions may be taken.

The ESD-facilitators have a middle leading role in their schools, which means that they enact leading practices from a position in between the teaching staff and the school leader (Grootenboer, Edwards-Groves & Rönnerman, 2015). There is limited research focusing on practitioners who facilitate processes of professional development (Perry & Boylan, 2018). Thus, little is known about how facilitators, and particularly those who facilitate a whole school approach to ESD, could be supported to carry out their role and tasks in an effective way, and what adequate conditions and arrangements for this might be. Taken together, this implies a gap in current knowledge about ESD implementation strategies, which this study aims to help bridging.

The research questions guiding the research are twofold: in the ESD-facilitators’ descriptions of their roles, functions and practices;

- What kinds of sustainability change agent roles can be identified?

- What contextual factors are experienced as successful and/or hindering?

Young people today have only ever known a world defined by climate and environmental crisis. Accordingly, studies show that young people are not only engaging with climate knowledge, but are having to navigate new emotional challenges (Hickman et al., 2021; Beaumont, 2021). Older generations therefore have a responsibility to support younger generations to navigate these ongoing climate issues. Many young people are already responding to these emotional challenges by ‘problem-focused coping’, such as trying to use their personal agency to contribute to actions which mitigate climate change (Ojala 2012). As such, we critically need to foster opportunities for two-way relationships of learning which allow for older generations to learn from the experiences, perspectives, and knowledge of young people. Our paper therefore considers opportunities for intergenerational interaction through ‘reverse pedagogical relationships’, which reverses the typical teacher or parent/carer-led style of learning.

The core aim of the study we present is to further develop the concept of reverse pedagogical relationship and to demonstrate its research value. Through doing so, we identify the strengths and challenges of reverse pedagogical relationship in contributing to transformational learning for climate change engagement. The objectives of this study are underpinned by the following two research questions: 1) How do young people perceive the opportunities and challenges of reverse pedagogical relationships? 2) How are the possibilities of reverse pedagogical relationships discursively constructed in young people's discourse in relation to climate agency?

Drawing on data from focus groups (six groups of 27 students) with Finnish young people (aged 15-18) we examine their experiences and thoughts on reverse pedagogical relationships. Since power is manifested in the pedagogical relationship and reverse pedagogy challenges this balance of power, we analysed this through a Foucauldian discourse analysis. By this, we mean we followed in the footsteps of Heikkinen, Silvonen and Simola (1999) and Räisänen (2014) to analyse the data through examining dimensions of subjectivity, power and knowledge. Through presenting our results, we show how these three dimensions are at once distinct and intertwined with each other.

The study we present is part of a larger project, called ‘Challenging the Climate Crisis: Children’s Agency to Tackle Policy Underpinned by Learning for Transformation’ (CCC-Catapult). This project examines young people’s experiences of and sense of agency in the climate crisis, with a particular focus on climate education and policy-making. As the project engages with a youth-focused co-productive process, the focus group questions for this study have been co-developed with 15–18-year-olds living in Tampere, as well as Bristol (UK) and Galway (Ireland).

SustainAll is an Erasmus+ Project with partners in Austria, Germany, Portugal and Norway. The aim of our project is to support All-day schools in developing a curriculum as well as day-to-day practices, which foster sustainability education. The project endorses the whole-school approach, integrating ESD / transformative education in a holistic manner. Accordingly, teaching and learning for sustainability is extended to aspects such as community involvement and integrated governance. The whole-school approach further advocates for active, participatory learning (Hargreaves, 2008). In order to do so, this project will learn from existing good-practice examples. Based on these examples, which will be researched through case studies, the project aims at fostering a transformative culture of ESD and sustainability practeces by developing in-service training modules for All-Day schools wishing to adapt their program towards ESD and transformative learning and to change their school policy in accordance with the whole-institution approach.

In the first project year 2022, at least two case studies were conducted in specifically selected primary and secondary schools in all participating countries.

The overarching research questions of the case studies are:

• How are ESD projects and initiatives integrated in schools?

• What are the characteristics or factors that contribute for an ESD project to be a good practice example?

• What is the relationship between ESD and (transformative) learning in the context of all-day and whole-school school approach?

For each case study and each country, the results will be reported from a distinct as well as from a comparative perspective within the symposium.

A common template and defined evaluation criteria guarantee that the data is collected and evaluated in a comparable way in each country. Each case study includes a document analysis, guided interviews and participant observation.

An extensive literature review and the analysis of pre-selected theoretical models of ESD-related school development allow to compare inductively gained insight into the case study data to relevant aspects deductively derived from relevant existing models.

The models included were systematically analysed for overlaps and differences.

Bianchi and colleagues (2022) identify a set of sustainability competences to be incorporated into educational programmes. According to the EU Commission, “GreenComp can serve a wide range of purposes, including curricula review, design of teacher education programs, (self-) assessment/reflection, policy development, certification, assessment, monitoring and evaluation” (p.3) which precisely serves our project goals. The Schools for Earth project (Greenpeace, 2021) offers an approach to structural school development (Greenpeace, 2021). With the goal of climate neutrality and the firm anchoring of an ambitious Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), six cyclical work phases are identified to make the whole school approach efficient. The 5R model of Henderson & Tilbury (2004) reveals five key considerations necessary for program managers and partners to operate and manage an effective program. These include the need for programs to be relevant, resourced, reflective, responsive and reformative. Verhelst et al. (2020) explicate a conceptual framework of an ESD-effective school in eight characteristics.

The synopsis of models with competence orientation and models for systematic and effective school development processes thus provide a broad basis for comparison with our case studies. The case studies presented in the symposium each show a specific focus.

The results of the case studies and the cross-case analysis form the basis for the design hubs (March 2023): national in-service teachers´ and educational researchers´ design hubs figure out together which materials and course content will be needed to help All-Day schools to include ESD /transformative education in their school curricula and change their day-to-day practices following a whole-school approach to sustainability.

These results will be presented and discussed in the last contribution of the symposium.

In 2017, Norway began a reform process of the national curriculum, which included the addition of three interdisciplinary topics: Democracy and Citizenship; Public health and Life skills; and Sustainable Development. The realisation of these reforms is explored through the selection of three case studies that offer different approaches. The first of these cases is a state funded elementary school which is part of a research project with an All-day approach that is offered to pupils up to 4th grade. The whole-school approach is visible through the Positive Behaviour, supportive Learning Environment and Interaction (PALS) model. The school has worked with the PALS model since 2015 which focuses on strengthening pupils with lifelong learning skills, ESD competencies and encourages participation from the pupils. The second case is a state funded lower secondary school. This case identifies sustainable development as a priority area and has adopted a whole-school approach which is achieved not only through in-school collaboration, but close collaboration with external actors to develop student active ESD projects and initiatives. The third case is a private Steiner school with both elementary and lower secondary level. The whole-school approach is visible through the Steiner pedagogy. The local municipality has ambitions to be a ´green´ municipality, and as the first in Norway to build an eco-village, the establishment of the Steiner school is an extension of this vision. We conducted document analysis, interviews with school leaders and teachers, and class observations. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. Qualitative thematic analysis was used to analyse the documents, interviews and observation data. Findings suggest that in all three of the case studies a whole-school approach is important for the implementation of ESD projects and initiatives, as supported by the literature (Greenpeace, 2021; Henderson and Tilbury, 2004). A further finding suggests that a whole-school approach was also important for the promotion of ESD competences with active engagement of external actors (Bianchi, G., Pisiotis, U. & Cabrera, M., 2022; Glasser & Hirsch, 2016; Rieckmann, 2018). However, the biggest challenge to ESD being lack of engagement on the part of some colleagues and this is something the schools continue to work on. In one of the case studies the All-day school approach was seen as a positive contribution to both the development of a whole-school approach and the promotion of ESD competences.

Bianchi, G., Pisiotis, U. & Cabrera, M. (2022). GreenComp. The European sustainability competence framework: JRC Science For Policy Report. Joint Research Centre. EUR: Bd. 30955. Publications Office of the European Union. https://doi.org/10.2760/13286  Glasser, H., & Hirsh, J. (2016). Toward the Development of Robust Learning for Sustainability Core Competencies. Sustainability: The Journal of Record, 9(3), 121–134. https://doi.org/10.1089/SUS.2016.29054.hg  Greenpeace. (2021). WHOLE SCHOOL APPROACH: Ganzheitlicher Ansatz zur Schulentwicklung. Schools for Earth.  Henderson, K. & Tilbury, D. (2004). Whole-School Approaches to Sustainability: An International Review of Sustainable School Programs. Report Prepared by the Australian Research Institute in Education for Sustainability (ARIES). https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412974615.n130  Rieckmann, M. (2018). Learning to transform the world: key competencies in Education for Sustainable Development. In A. Leicht, J. Heiss & W. J. Byun (Hrsg.), Education on the move. Issues and trends in education for sustainable development (pp.39-59). United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Chapter 2. 

The two case studies in Austria were conducted at the primary school Wölfnitz (Case A) and the private grammer school Modellschule Graz (Case B). Both schools are part of ÖKOLOG, Austria’s largest network for schools and sustainability, which currently comprises 11% (over 700 schools) of the Austrian schools of all types as well as 13 (out of 14) university colleges for teacher education (Rauch & Pfaffenwimmer, 2020). Both schools can be described as "very advanced" in terms of their ESD activities integrated in its all-day activities. In terms of ESD and all-day school activities, two major themes become visible at the primary school Wölfnitz (Case A): ESD is integrated in the whole school approach and the participation of teachers and students. Although the school is an all-day school in separated form, the cooperation between the teachers and the afternoon educators has developed. The interviewees mentioned as hindering factors to implement ESD among others the lack of space (i.e. more rooms for the afternoon care), and that not all teachers are equally interested. The case study suggests the following characteristics that support these successful developments: the professional and emotional support of the head teacher, the motivation of the majority of teachers and students and cooperation with external ESD experts. Based on the model for ESD effective schools from Verhelst et al. (2020), three characteristics can be particularly emphasized: The ÖKOLOG programme acts as a shared vision and reflects the school-wide understanding of ESD. The school community of primary school Wölfnitz practices pluralistic communication with space and time for discussions and sharing on different viewpoints. All relevant stakeholders are involved in the democratic decision-making process. The Modellschule Graz (Case B), an integrated all-day school, widely established ESD into a whole-school culture which points towards its students, teachers, school staff and parents. All learn and act reflective and ambitious with the intention of being sustainable and experiencing it in its many facets. The Modellschule Graz finds itself in all characteristics compared to the model for ESD effective schools from Verhelst et al. (2020). Especially emphasized should be that the students are integrated in democratic decision making processes. Pluralistic communication processes are part of the democratic structures of the school and its pedagogy. Sustainability themes are selected jointly by teachers and students. Challenges at this school are associated with communication with parents, i.e. meet-free days initiated by students were feared not getting enough protein.

Rauch, F. & Pfaffenwimmer, G. (2020). The Austrian ECOLOG-Schools Programme – Networking for Environmental and Sustainability Education. pp. 85-102. In: A. Gough, J. Chi Kin Lee and E. Po Keung Tsang (eds.). Green Schools Globally: Stories of Impact for Sustainable Development. Dortrecht, Springer. Verhelst, D., Vanhoof, J., Boeve-de Pauw, J., & Van Petegem, P. (2020). Building a conceptual framework for an ESD-effective school organisation. The Journal of Environmental Education, 1-16. doi:10.1080/00958964.2020.1797615

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is recognized as “an integral element of quality education and a key enabler for sustainable development” (UN, n.d.). However, little is known about good practice that influences students’ ESD outcome (Laurie et al., 2016). This study highlights the self-conception of schools’ freedom and space as a predictor for students’ ESD outcome. The research question is to what extent does the differently perceived degrees of freedom at a private primary school and the lack of freedom at a state secondary school influence the possibility of developing an ESD-friendly school? Both schools are selected based on their curricular dedication to ESD. Guided in-depth group interviews with school staff, parents and students were conducted and analyzed. Participants were selected based on the principals’ suggestion; participation was voluntary. The interviews (two/three interviews at the private/state school, ca. 60’ each) were recorded and transcribed. The transcripts were deductively coded using MaxQDA. The qualitative content analysis follows mixed procedures of content structuring/theme analysis (Mayring, 2000; Rädiker/ Kuckartz, 2019). The results of the document analysis and the observation report are also included and underline the results of the interviews. At the state school a lack of freedom is examined: The need for freedom is reflected in the fact that the terms “free” and “space” appear 35 times in the interviews, mostly as something missing (“Yes, because without this freedom, and the freedom affects the teachers just as much as the students, it somehow remains very exhausting. (TR226765, Pos. 19)"). In contrast, the terms appear only 6 times within the private school interviews and then mostly framed positively as something that already exists ("So you are not so helplessly at the mercy of a system, but the freedom of this system also enables you to go other ways. (TR220623, Pos. 18)"). The two cases show clear differences in terms of freedom: While the private school already considers a strong perception of already existing freedom and developmental space as a success factor, the state high school seeks to increase the degrees of freedom because staff and students consider it as a crucial component for a successful ESD. The differences between the schools are striking. Further studies must reveal whether these differences are representative of state schools - and whether sufficient freedom in terms of interests and participation, personnel development and empowerment, school development and grading are actually predictive for an intended ESD outcome.

Laurie, R., Nonoyama-Tarumi, Y., Mckeown, R., & Hopkins, C. (2016). Contributions of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) to Quality Education: A Synthesis of Research. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 10(2), 226–242. https://doi.org/10.1177/0973408216661442 Mayring, P. (2000). Qualitative Content Analysis. FQS Forum: Qualitative Social Research Sozialforschung, 1(2), Article 20, 81–120. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190215491.003.0004 Rädiker, S., & Kuckartz, U. (2019). Analyse qualitativer Daten mit MAXQDA: Text, Audio und Video. Lehrbuch. Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22095-2 United Nations (n.d.). SDG4. Education. https://sdgs.un.org/topics/education

In the context of the SustainALL Erasmus+ Project, we aimed at finding examples of good practices about Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) across partner countries to inform the development of training modules for teachers. The research team developed a common approach to instrumental illuminative rich bounded case studies, which ideally should fulfil seven criteria, namely, provide elementary and middle education, adopt an all-day and whole-school approach, be part of an eco-school network or similar, count on support and collaboration, have several years of experience, and effectively communicate the projects. Each partner reported at least two case studies including qualitative data from interviews, observations, and documents. Data was analysed according to mixed procedures of content structuring/ theme analysis (Mayring, 2022). The initial reports were sent to schools for member checking. The research team is currently conducting a cross-case analysis to better understand how ESD is being integrated across countries, evaluating how data corroborates or challenges theoretical models on ESD. Such results will form the basis for the Design Hubs (DH). The DH are derived from the innovation hub metaphor (Dhanaraj & Parkhe, 2006) where researchers, teachers, school administrators, interested pupils and teacher educators work together on an equal footing. This co-creation process offers a high level of participation for each stakeholder group, which is one quality criteria for ESD schools (Breiting et al. 2005). The aim is to discuss the results of the cross-case analyses and to develop ideas for the next step, which is to design materials and the online modules for a blended-learning teacher training course. Hence, an Educational Design Research approach (McKenney & Reeves, 2018) is applied to relate scientific findings and practice-relevant solutions in a multi-level iterative design process. During two 3-hour design-thinking workshops (one in Norway and one in Germany) the DH identify materials and course content to support All-Day schools including ESD / transformative education in their school curricula and changing their day-to-day practices following a whole-school approach to sustainability. The perspective of younger students will be included through video messages created in the participating schools. The DH are run in spring 2023. Results of both cross-analyses and design hubs will be presented at the conference.

Breiting, S., Mayer, M. & Mogensen, F. (2005). Quality Criteria for ESD-Schools. Guidelines to enhance the quality of Education for Sustainable Development. Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. Dhanaraj, C. & Parkhe, A. (2006). Orchestrating Innovation Networks. Academy of Management Review, 31 (3), 659–669. Mayring, Ph. (2022). Qualitative Content Analysis. A Step-by-Step Guide. London: Sage. McKenney, S. & Reeves, T. C. (2018). Conducting educational design research. London: Routledge

This symposium aims to explore the state of the art of research in Global Education and Learning (GEL) in current Europe. Drawing on data collected from the five editions of the Multilingual Global Education Digest, the symposium will look particularly at the contribution of literature other than English, namely Finnish, Portuguese and Italian, discussing these three cases in the framework of European academic production in GEL and related issues.

In the last decade, the focus on the global dimension in education has grown both in the educational policies of many national governments and in the practices of formal and non-formal education. In this context GEL has become an umbrella term covering a range of educational traditions and a body of knowledge on global issues.

In Europe, the so-called “global education” approach was first reflected in the Global Education Charter, adopted in 1997 by the Council of Europe. Subsequently, the Maastricht Declaration promoted in 2002 by the Council of Europe has so far provided a framework for European and member state strategies on global education. After 20 years the Maastricht declaration has been revised at the end of a long public consultation process involving experts and stakeholders and gave rise to what has been designated the Dublin Declaration (GENE, 2022)

While there is extensive literature and systematic review on GCE (Goren & Yemini, 2017), and ESD (Bascopé et al., 2019) there is a lack of in-depth analysis on the academic contribution in European languages other than English. Yet data show that out of 3,500 publications that have been published in the last ten years in 10 European languages only half are in English (ANGEL, 2020, 2021, 2022).

However, as papers in this symposium will demonstrate there has been a considerable engagement in GEL themes within a range of European countries such as Germany, Italy, Finland, Spain and Portugal. The discussion will recognise the important role played by literature in English as lingua franca of the international research community, but a distinctive feature of this symposium will be also to ensure that voices on debates from other European languages as well as from other regions of the world are included.

The papers in this symposium will combine literature analysis in various European countries with data included in various editions of the Multilingual Global Education Digest. The 5 editions of this report provide a reasoned bibliography of academic and research materials relevant to the field of GEL, outlining the growing space that this approach occupies within the scholarly discourse and providing an invaluable guide for researchers, policymakers and practitioners. The first edition compiled literature published from 2015-2017, and was followed by editions in 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022. Over time, the Digest has expanded to incorporate research in an increasing number of languages, with the last edition including 10 languages: English, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovakian, and Spanish.

The Global Education Digest project, was developed by the Academic Network of Global Education and Learning (ANGEL) and was coordinated by the Development Education Research Centre (DERC) at UCL, Institute of Education and the UNESCO Chair in Global Citizenship Education at the University of Bologna with the contribution of 36 scholars from 13 different countries.

The symposium will look at different national trends in this research area giving voice to three emblematical and diverse cases: Finnish (Riikka Suhonen et al.), Portuguese (Dalila Cohelo et al.) and Italian (Carla Inguaggiato et al.). Finally, Douglas Bourn will critically discuss the papers by also bringing in the English perspective.

The change of concepts around Global Education and Learning (GEL) in Finnish language has been constant (Lehtomäki & Rajala, 2020). The National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (EDUFI, 2014) includes concepts such as ‘global education’ (globaalikasvatus) and ‘global responsibility’ (globaali vastuu), while the National Core Curriculum for General Upper Secondary Education (EDUFI, 2019) features ‘global competence’ (globaali osaaminen), ‘global citizenship’ (globaalikansalaisuus) and ‘international competence’ (kansainvälinen osaaminen). Finnish civil society organisations prominently use ‘global citizenship education’ (globaali kansalaiskasvatus). A particular concept in the Finnish context since the 2010s is ‘ecosocial Bildung’ (ekososiaalinen sivistys) or ‘ecosocial education’ (ekososiaalinen kasvatus), related to theories of posthumanism, strong sustainability and ecofeminism, stressing interdependence and relations between humans and other-than-humans, and taking into account global perspective and future generations (Pulkki et al., 2021). The research review was based on the Maastricht Declaration definition of Global Education. As our literature search for publications in Finnish was conducted for the first time, we included an extensive list of keywords, stemming both from the history and from the recent policy and academic debate such as global competence, ecosocial Bildung, futures education and climate change education. The aim was to discover unexpected publications as not all relevant research explicitly uses the term ‘global education’ or ‘global citizenship education’ in Finnish. Our search produced a total of 105 Finnish language publications related to global education published between 2017 and 2021 (Suhonen et al., 2022), of which 45% were academic articles, 20% grey materials, 19% books or book chapters, 10% reports and 6% doctoral theses. Publications focused mainly on formal education (n = 41, 39%) as well as on theoretical and conceptual discussions (n = 23, 22%). Notably only two publications examined international volunteering, study visits and educational partnerships, and six publications teacher education. A thorough keyword analysis of these Finnish language publications on global education highlights trends and specific features of the publications and their use of terms. The results show that although there is a diversity of concepts used in the Finnish context, global education is still the most common keyword used, whereas global citizenship education did not feature that much yet. We conclude that conceptual clarity and new directions are necessary also in the Finnish context. As an example, the relationship between global education and environmental and sustainability education needs to be further explored and clarified.

Finnish National Agency for Education EDUFI (2014). National Core Curriculum for Basic Education. Finnish National Agency for Education EDUFI (2019). National Core Curriculum for General Upper Secondary Education. Lehtomäki, E., & Rajala, A. (2020). Global Education Research in Finland. In D. Bourn (Ed.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Global Education and Learning, 105-120. Bloomsbury Academic. Pulkki, J., Varpanen, J. & Mullen, J. (2021). Ecosocial Philosophy of Education: Ecologizing the Opinionated Self. Stud Philos Educ 40, 347–364. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-020-09748-3 Suhonen, R., Kylänpää, V., Posti-Ahokas, H., Piipponen, O. & Kasa, T. (2022). Finnish / Suomi: Johdanto. In Multilingual Global Education Digest 2022, 61-78. Development Education Research Centre DERC: University College of London.

Understanding GEL in Portugal demands looking at its informal and formal emergence (Coelho, Caramelo, & Menezes, 2019). Its informal rise exemplifies a critical orientation at the root of GEL, while its formal constitution links to larger European efforts (Coelho, Caramelo, & Menezes, 2019; O’Loughlin & Wegimont, 2014). Development NGOs were (and remain) central, while the field has expanded to formal education and policy level actors, reflecting European trends (GENE, 2022). Development Education and Global Citizenship Education have, therefore, shaped GEL in Portugal, exemplifying the varied and intersectional nature of GEL the Dublin Declaration alludes to. Grounded on a literature compilation over a decade (see ANGEL, 2020, 2021, 2022), firstly we discuss key trends and implications. Secondly, we consider the particular situation of GEL in teacher training and formal education in Portugal, given the high number of publications on these topics. In the last three editions of the Multilingual Global Education Digest we identified 119 documents in Portuguese published between 2010-2021, mostly after 2015. Academic journal articles are the main type of publication, followed by books and book chapters. Formal education has been the preferential focus of the literature on GEL in Portugal (n= 38), especially through the publication of academic articles reporting classroom interventions and books with pedagogical resources and/or guidelines for practice. This could be attributed to recent policy reforms defining students’ expected profile and reintroducing citizenship issues in the curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2017). GEL has also a growing presence in teacher education (n=19) and is often a topic addressed in pre-service teachers’ classroom projects during their practicum. This is visible in the relevant number of master dissertations published between 2010-2020 (n=48), exploring the integration of GEL themes (e.g., sustainability and diversity) in formal education contexts. In fact, research on teacher education in Portugal suggests that teachers are generally open to GE. Yet, they consider it too vague and complex, demanding support on appropriate teaching and assessment methods and better subject knowledge (Lourenço, 2021). This is aligned with recent policy documents calling for a need to “develop adequate structures of support for educators” to “bridge the gap between the willingness to integrate Global Education, and the confidence, skills, competencies and support to do so” (GENE, 2022:4-5). In short, together with a strengthened scientific debate, these data evidence the vitality of GEL in Portugal, as well as the need to further the discussion on teacher education.

ANGEL (2020). Global Education Digest 2020. DERC. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10112144/ ANGEL (2021). Global Education Digest 2021. DERC. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10137056/ ANGEL (2022). Global Education Digest 2022. DERC. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10161623/ Coelho, D.P., Caramelo, J., & Menezes, I. (2019). Mapping the field of Development Education in Portugal: narratives and challenges in a de/post/colonial context. Journal of Social Science Education, 18(2). https://doi.org/10.4119/jsse-1118 GENE (2022). The European Declaration on Global Education to 2050. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f6decace4ff425352eddb4a/t/636d0eb7a86f6419e3421770/1668091577585/GE2050-declaration.pdf Lourenço, M. (2021). From caterpillars to butterflies: Exploring pre-service teachers’ transformations while navigating global citizenship education. Frontiers in Education, 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.651250 Ministry of Education (2017). National Strategy for Citizenship Education. https://cidadania.dge.mec.pt/sites/default/files/pdfs/national-strategy-citizenship-education.pdf O’Loughlin, E., & Wegimont, L. (Eds.). (2014). Global Education in Portugal. The European Global Education Peer Review Process. GENE. https://ened-portugal.pt/site/public/paginas/avaliacao-do-gene-pt-1.pdf Resolução do Conselho de Ministros n. 94/2018. National Strategy for Development Education 2018-2022. https://dre.pt/dre/detalhe/resolucao-conselho-ministros/94-2018-115698904

This paper explores the publications on Global Education and Learning (GEL) from 2012 to 2021 included in the Italian chapters of Multilingual Global Education Digest (Faggioli & Locatelli, 2020; Faggioli & Inguaggiato, 2021; Vittori et al, 2022). The analysis aims to understand the evolution of GEL conceptualization and connect to international, European and national key policy events. The preliminary results suggest that GEL faces several challenges to embed into the Italian pedagogical context compared to other European countries. In Italy GEL is rooted in two main educational approaches: a) intercultural education, b) education for international cooperation or development education. In earlier period, the main scientific contributions on GEL in Italian are developed from studies on the inclusion of students with migrant background (Catarci et al., 2020; Fiorucci, 2017; Loiodice, 2020; Premoli, 2008; Santerini, 2010; Surian, 2019; Tarozzi, 2003, 2005, 2008b, 2015). There were fewer publications on studies and research on international cooperation and development education, which remains a topic more related to the work of NGOs and development cooperation activities. This dual nature of GEL emerges also from the analysis of the scientific literature dedicated to formal education. GEL is mentioned since the 2012 in ministerial guidelines (National Indications for Pre-school and First Cycle of Education, 2012), however it still remains marginal in the school curricula (Franch, 2020). The development observed in school educational practices (and consequently described in publications) strongly relates to the work of NGOs and the intertwining of NGOs and schools (Tarozzi Inguaggiato, 2018; Tarozzi, 2020, Damiani, 2020). In 2018, the Italian Strategy for GCE was adopted as a result of a collaborative work of NGOs, local authorities and some universities (Surian, 2019, Franch, 2020)). In 2020 and 2021, the growth of GEL publications seems to relate to Sustainable Development Goals Agenda and the introduction of compulsory civic education in the first and second cycle of education (Law 92/2019). Understanding the interconnections between GEL publications and implementation into educational practices can contribute to identify elements that favor and hamper integration of this educational approach into the formal and non-formal education in Italy.

Fiorucci, M. (2017). Educare alla cittadinanza globale in una prospettiva interculturale. In G. Crescenza & A. Volpicella (Ed.), Una bussola per la scuola. (69–90). Edizione Conoscenza. Damiani, V. (2020). Educating Pre-Service Teachers on Global Citizenship: Research Perspectives from a Preliminary Study in the Italian context. Journal of Social Science Education, 19(4): 23-44. Franch, S. (2020). Global citizenship education discourses in a province in northern Italy. International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning, 12 (1): 21–36. Premoli, S. (2008). Pedagogie per un mondo globale. Culture, panorami dell’educazione, prospettive. Torino: EGA. Surian, A. (2019). I recenti orientamenti sull’Educazione alla Cittadinanza Globale. RicercAzione, 11(1): 117–135. Tarozzi, M. (2017). Educare alla cittadinanza globale, fra crisi del multiculturalismo e nuovi bisogni di equità. In I. Loiodice & S. Ulivieri (Ed.), Per un nuovo patto di solidarietà. Il ruolo della pedagogia nella costruzione dei percorsi identitari, spazi di cittadinanza e dialoghi interculturali (221–230). Progedid. Tarozzi, M., & Inguaggiato, C. (2018). Implementing global citizenship education in EU primary schools: The role of government ministries. International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning, 10(1): 21–38. Tarozzi, M., & Torres, C. A. (2016). Global Citizenship Education and the Crises of Multiculturalism. London: Bloomsbury

Workshop

Abstract

What kind of educational research methodologies emerge from the development of an interdisciplinary project on the future of trees and treescapes in the UK?

This workshop draws on the organisers’ experiences of co-producing research with children and young people (CYP), their educators and curricula as part of a 3-year interdisciplinary UKRI project Voices of the Future: Collaborating with children and young people to re-imagine treescapes. The project is led by Prof Kate Pahl (Manchester Metropolitan University) and includes researchers from four other universities including the University of Aberdeen and community partners.

Our research includes working with children and young people from pre-school age to young refugees and asylum seekers and students. In this workshop our focus is on the methodologies which we draw on to frame our work and those which have emerged as we approach the midway point in our research with children, students and staff as they navigate dwelling and learning with trees.

We are interested in how learning through the context of trees opens up opportunities to work across aspects of the curriculum. How can children and young people see the purpose and value of environmental sustainability in everyday life and for the future and how can they actively contribute to it? We take a socio-cultural approach to the question of how children and young people see the values of UK treescapes. We are interested in how learning with trees creates different ways of recognising and working with diversity in relation to culture and class and the complexity of different local environments. This has involved disrupting concepts such as ‘native’ species when thinking about planting new trees and exploring existing woods and forests.

There is also recognition of an urgent need to systematically co-produce and evaluate with children and young people a policy for future urban treescapes, as well as to articulate the benefits of outdoor spaces for diverse young people’s health and well-being. Children and young people ‘currently have limited opportunities to cultivate, voice, and express their understandings, concerns, and imaginings about climate change within their local environments and communities’ (Rousell and Cutter-Mackenzie 2019:192).

There have been few interdisciplinary, evaluative studies of children’s participation in, and construction of treescapes. Our project seeks to explore how to creatively integrate children and young people’s knowledge, experience, hopes and activism with scientific knowledge, environmental activism and educational and social policy. In the literature there has been a predominant focus on the multiple benefits of children’s engagements with ‘natures’ in light of evidence that children are spending less time outdoors, have fewer experiences of nature, and are, as a result, less healthy and less likely to hold the kinds of environmental knowledges held by past generations. There is also a correlation in many countries between tree canopy cover and income level (Sax, Manson and Nesbit 2020), with historically marginalized residents having less access to treescapes. Jannsson et al (2014), amongst others, argue for the need to research a much more long-term engagement by children and young people with treescapes, such as studies by Gurholt in Norway (2014) and that children’s attachment to, and friendship with place is developed by repeated use and expressions of creativity (Chatterjee 2005).

In this workshop we will explore both practical and philosophical methodologies which we are using to underpin our research. This will include working outside with trees and responding to reflective questions which have arisen from our work.