Conference Agenda

Scientific evidence unequivocally shows that human activity is warming the planet and that without drastic efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts on societies around the world will be catastrophic, including extreme weather, famine and rapid biodiversity loss (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – IPCC, 2021). In 2015, 196 countries signed up to the Paris Agreement that set out a clear goal to limit global warming to 2°C, and preferably 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels (UNFCCC, 2022). However evidence shows current actions are neither sufficient or rapid enough as we head dangerously close to surpassing 1.5°C of warming (IPCC, 2021), leading the UN Secretary-General to label this “a code red for humanity” (UN, 2021).

The climate crisis is underpinned by injustice. This injustice is at least three-fold. Those least responsible for the climate crisis are often most at risk of its impacts, whilst having the fewest resources to make the required adaptations whilst also having the least power to make the necessary systemic changes in hierarchically and generationally ordered societies (Islam and Winkel, 2017; UNICEF, 2015). This injustice includes children and young people and is both between and within countries, with poorer nations and communities, along with Indigenous peoples, particularly at risk (Givens et al., 2019). Issues of inequality and poverty are also compounded by, and intersect with, social categories and identities such as ethnicity, age, social class and gender (Pellow, 2016).

As we navigate through a changing and increasingly unpredictable world, the importance of education cannot be underestimated. The importance of learning with as well as learning from diverse community perspectives, especially those already facing the injustices, of the climate crisis also becomes central in understanding how we mitigate against and adapt to this new world. This is made all the more pertinent by the widespread disconnect amongst many citizens where even those with an awareness of climate change are often likely to feel that its impacts are happening to somebody else and in a distant future (McAdam, 2017).

This paper presents important insights from an international research collaboration using participatory action research along the Red River in Northern Vietnam. Here, climate change is significantly impacting on the lives and livelihoods of its citizens through a number of hydrological extremities including droughts, landslides due to heavy rains and enhanced soil erosion upstream, flooding in mid-stream and rising sea levels, sinking land and accelerating saltwater intrusion in downstream. The project supported youth to both learn about climate change and to become researchers in their own communities. This provided youth with an opportunity to engage in climate action utilising an approach underpinned by Freire’s understanding of praxis, that is ‘reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it’ (Freire, 2005: 51). In particular, youth were encouraged to seek out stories of ‘action’ over issues (De Meyer et al., 2021) through critical dialogue, that is people adapting to living with climate change thus recognising that diverse people’s lived experiences are an important asset (Freire, 1970). Youth were then supported to develop creative ways to share these stories this with both their own and other communities. The focus on youth action is particularly important because it equips youth with a sense of agency and ‘hope’ that can help support youth in dealing with climate anxiety (Hickman et al., 2021). As Freire argues in the Pedagogy of Hope, ‘hopelessness and despair are both the consequences and the cause of inaction and immobilism’ (Freire, 2004: 3) and with that, seeking out these opportunities for hope is one of most important tasks for the progressive educator.

The paper presents findings from a three-years research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, addressing the question of how student beliefs on global issues are dealt with in lower-secondary schools. Whereas this paper will focus on recurring belief patterns that emerged in focus group discussions with students, Fabio Schmid will submit a second paper looking at teachers’ practices and motivations.

“Global issues“ can be defined as challenges of global relevance which affect “a large number of people on different sides of national boundaries”, are “of significant concern, directly or indirectly, to all or most of the countries of the world”, and have “implications that require a global regulatory approach”, whereby “no one government has the power or the authority to impose a solution, and market forces alone will not solve” the problem (Bhargava, 2006, p. 1). Global issues are linked with environmental and sustainability concerns in myriad ways. This is exemplified by the United Nations framework Education 2030, which combines Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship Education. While such educational concepts addressing societal challenges have been critiqued in the past as “instrumentalist” (Marshall, 2011, p. 418) and too action-oriented (Kürsteiner & Rinaldi, 2019; Pais & Costa, 2020; Wettstädt & Asbrand, 2016), it is almost uncontested that global issues need to be addressed in formal schooling.

Global issues are complex, controversial, and dynamic. This presents several challenges for teachers. On the one hand, the complexity of global issues and the speed with which they develop requires teachers to constantly work on their (pedagogical) content knowledge – and to accept that their own knowledge will never be complete. On the other hand, due to the controversiality of the issues, teachers must engage with their own beliefs and, potentially, with how they might or might not be reconciled with their mandate as a teacher, and the beliefs of their students (e.g. Rinaldi, 2017). Consequently, being aware of student beliefs, which are considered to be part of teachers‘ pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986), is important for pedagogical practice.

Student beliefs about global issues have been addressed in various contexts and forms. A number of studies has focused on concepts such as politics and democracy (for a collection of methods and empirical studies cf. Lange & Fischer, 2011), sustainability (Holfelder, 2018), globalisation (Fischer et al, 2015; Uphues, 2007) and world views (Krogull, 2018). Student beliefs on specific topical issues, including climate change (e.g. Chang & Pascua, 2016) and migration (e.g. Budke & Hoogen, 2017) have also been studied. What is missing so far is a study that focuses on global issues more broadly. Against this background, the study addresses the following research question: Which beliefs do lower secondary students in Switzerland have about global issues? It is divided into the following sub-questions.

• Q1: How do they conceptualise global issues specially (locally, nationally, regionally, globally) and temporally (past, present and future-related)
• Q2: How do they link global issues with human rights and child rights?
• Q3: In how far do they feel affected by global issues? Which emotions do global issues cause? In how far are they prepared to act themselves?
• Q4: Which conceptions do they have of political processes and their own agency (self-efficacy) when dealing with global issues?

The study aims to develop a typology of beliefs across different global issues.

Climate change communication and education (CCE) is increasingly becoming important. Within international educational agendas, it is primarily embedded within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Article 6 and Paris Agreement Article 12 as Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE). ACE is divided into six elements: education, training, public awareness, public access to information, public participation, and international cooperation.

At COP27 in 2022, Parties adopted the Action Plan under the Glasgow work Programme on Action for Climate Empowerment. The Action Plan focuses on short-term goals for the next four years regarding ACE, encouraging Parties and other stakeholders to take concrete action. One of the four thematic priorities countries agreed on is monitoring, evaluation, and reporting (MER). Activity D2 of the Action Plan calls for “Enhancing understanding of what constitutes high-quality and effective evaluation of ACE activities, according to national circumstances”.

The Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education (MECCE) Project is a six-year Project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Canada. The Project’s goals are to enhance the quality and quantity of CCE globally. Partners include over 100 leading scholars and agencies, including UNESCO and UNFCCC.

To cover the different aspects of CCE, the MECCE Project is developing and collecting different kinds of data. Axis 1 collects primarily qualitative data, such as Case Studies and Country Profiles. To date, we funded 12 Case Studies, with another round of 10 Case Studies to be underway by mid-2023. Further, we published 50 Country Profiles jointly with UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report, with plans to add 20-30 Country Profiles ahead of COP28 in November 2023. Axis 2 focuses on quantitative data, developing global indicators for the different ACE-Elements. We follow a phased approach, meaning new indicators are being published as they become available. The MECCE Project presented the first nine indicators at COP27 in 2022. All three different kinds of data sources form part of Interactive Data Platform (IDP), a visualization tool to make the data and its findings more accessible to the public.

This presentation will focus on the intersections between the different elements presented on the MECCE Project’s IDP. Specifically, the presentation will look at the data available for European countries and how they compare. We will compare nine European countries that we have Countries Profiles written for (Sweden, Germany, Malta, Portugal, Italy, Lithuania, France, Czechia, and Albania) and analyze them together with data from Axis 2 data. This analysis shows how different kinds of data can be used to advance MER from a country-driven approach as called-for in the Action Plan.

While several students are engaged in the sustainability movement, when it comes to everyday choices of food, transportation and personal purchases, it is reported by several authors that major sustainability challenges such as climate change instil feelings of fear, confusion and hopelessness, especially among young people. Despite the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development and the Global Action Program under the auspices of the United Nations, there remains a call for curricula and teachers to reflect and respond to such a focus in formal education. International environmental agreements such as the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development and the Sustainable Development Goals highlight the expectations on education for sustainable development (ESD) to develop students’ competences so that they will be motivated to act on sustainability challenges in a competent, ethically sensitive, and critically reflective manner.

Action in ESD needs to be informed by both the knowledge there is about a sustainability challenge and the knowledge we do not yet have access to. The wickedness of sustainability problems seems to resist traditional scientific means of problem definition and problem solving. When approaching the complexity of a sustainability challenge by addressing for example ecological, economic, and social aspects, there are not only epistemic but also multiple ethical conflicts that arise. Any attempt to understand the complexity of these issues means that a door is opened towards uncertainty. Thus, scientific knowledge alone does not seem to be sufficient to make change come around or to make people want to act on sustainability issues. Therefore, an alternative strand of thought is used in this paper, that of uncertainties. Rather than focussing on what we already know about how to deal with various sustainability challenges in education, it might be relevant to focus on inconsistencies and the incompleteness of knowledge in order to render actionable knowledge and progressive decision-making. Attention to the role of uncertainty, wickedness, and complexity in the epistemology of sustainability is suggested to have an important function in education in general and in ESD in particular.

While the knowledge required to make various personal decisions which will impact their carbon footprints the global sustainability injustices require students to develop their ethical sensitivity and awareness, their competence not to avoid taking action. The notion of action can presumably refer to various changes due to internal or external drivers. Rather than introducing a roadmap to a sustainable future, action readiness invites the authorship of the students to substantiate ESD-action. To further probe the element of action as well as inaction, this paper addresses the motivational role of emotions. Emotions are investigated as an impetus for action, displaying various degrees in strength and urgency. Such emotions may be guided by students developing” green virtues”. Two virtue ethicists that can inform what right and competent actions may be, are Ernest Sosa and Linda Zagzebski. Sosa addresses the performance-related concept of competence as accurate (true), adroit (competently produced) and apt (accurate because adroit). Zagzebski presents a theory of moral exemplars, who are identified by their actions. By the emotion of admiration of the actions of the moral exemplars, we may be motivated not to avoid taking action.

Ultimately the interest of the study is to influence and contribute to educational (ESD) practice, methodology and theory but specifically the study aims to answer two questions:

What constitutive elements of the concept of action readiness may influence action to a greater or lesser extent in education for sustainable development (ESD)?

How can a motivational theory of emotions be understood in relation to the notion of action and action readiness in ESD?

The word care or its semantic variations is omnipresent in everyday speech about climate change and societal issues that e.g. ‘matter’ and need to be ‘taken care of’. There is an increasing amount of academic literature debating care in relation to education and sustainability with a variety of theoretical frameworks. To date, however, there is no comprehensive examination of how care surfaces in the current ESE literature, which is aimed to be explored in this paper in form of a literature review.

Identifying various conceptualizations and manifestations is vital to go beyond an everyday understanding of ’care’. More specifically this paper explores literature on care in the research field of ESE and employs an additional focus on implications for higher education; an educational context in which care is not often attended to (Anderson et al. 2020). This review of literature elaborates on (1) the conceptualization of care and (2) the theoretical frameworks that are appealed to in ESE literature with a focus on the educational practice of teaching and learning (Didaktik) in higher education. Thus, besides providing an overview of the different conceptualizations of care in ESE research, the analysis results in an identification of motivations for care and its practical implications, including conditions for care and a reflection on its implied or observable consequences and manifestations. Furthermore, the paper does also contribute with an overview of how care is framed in ESE research by contrasting the theoretical frameworks that are commonly drawn upon.

Exploring the literature reveals that mainly two bodies of research are dealing, in one way or another, with care. The first one concerns research and writings about emotions towards climate change and sustainability-related issues coming from a place of care for the world. During the last decade we have seen numerous publications with a range of psychological interpretations and discussions of its consequences (see e.g. Verlie 2019, Ojala et al. 2021, Todd 2020, Wray 2022). Some scholars discuss how provoking specific feelings might result in higher awareness and more sustainable lifestyle choices (e.g. Kals & Maes 2002, Rakib et al. 2022). In contrast, other scholars argue that those - as ‘negative’ interpreted - feelings such as of worry and unease, prohibit the individual from getting engaged and leaving them in despair and depression (Wray 2022). Which is where the second body of literature intersects, concerning the ethical dimension of ESE that are brought about through care or result in discussions on care as a moral responsibility. Dealing with the ethical dimension of sustainability is a long-standing research interest and has been the topic of a symposium on ethics of the Environmental and Sustainability Research Network (ESER) and associated mini-collection of the contributions (Öhman 2016).

Climate change and sustainability education can be understood as broad, pluralistic approaches to education that aim to generate understanding of the wide-ranging, interconnected, environmental and social issues that are defining our time, and that support people’s capabilities for acting in response to those issues. Climate change education in particular is a ‘hyper-complex’ concept (Laessoe et al., 2009) as it brings two independently complex concepts of ‘education’ and ‘climate change’ together. Greer and Glackin set out six qualities of a meaningful educational response to climate change (2021), arguing that quality climate change education should: offer and be open to alternatives; accept and embrace complexity; develop ecological worldviews; re-orient towards justice; incorporate multiple types of knowledge and skills to tackle complex problems; and finally it should recognise and support students as agents of change, repositioning students from recipients of information, and future inheritors of climate change related problems, to action-oriented approaches that recognise them as participants in society’s response to climate change and collaborators in society’s transformation.

The need to enhance the quality and quantity of climate change and sustainability education has been widely advocated and discussed in the research literature; for example, Jickling and Blenkinsop (2020) argue that education must be at the heart of the large-scale change project that transforms people and cultures to more ecologically and socially sustainable ways of being. This is supported by a plethora of recent polling data from schools in the UK, which has identified an appetite amongst students and teachers to enhance the provision of climate change and sustainability education in schools. For example, polls undertaken by Teach the Future (2019, 2020) found 75% of teachers did not feel they have had adequate training and 92% suggested that more should be done to address climate change in schools. Research echoes these concerns; for example, Howard-Jones et al. (2021) explored teachers’ views on an action-oriented climate change curriculum, finding less than half (40%) considered they had the resources they needed to answer students’ questions about climate change, and arguing the need for an action-based curriculum which includes issues of global social justice, at all school phases.

In 2022 the Department for Education (DfE) launched the Sustainability and climate change strategy for the education and children’s services system which sets out the UK Government’s commitment to providing climate change and sustainability education for children and young people in England which “Makes a difference to children and young people all over the world” (DfE, 2022). While this is a laudable aim, research suggests teachers do not currently feel equipped to provide the climate change and sustainability education required by the strategy. With this in mind, we conducted a survey with teachers in England to deepen understanding of their practice related to climate change and sustainability, to find out how confident, prepared and supported they feel to incorporate climate change and sustainability in their teaching, and to investigate their related professional development experiences and needs.

The survey was guided by the following broad research questions: 

1. How do teachers conceptualize climate change and sustainability education, and how does this correlate with the scholarly views on what quality climate change and sustainability education should be?
2. What are teachers’ practices and experiences of climate change and sustainability education teaching? What factors influence these?
3. What professional development opportunities for climate change and sustainability education do teachers in England experience?
4. What are the implications for practice in relation to teacher professional development around climate change and sustainability education?

With heat waves, droughts, flooding, and hurricanes occurring more frequently on a global scale, sustainability is high on the agendas of policy makers and scholars alike (e.g. European Commission, 2019; United Nations, 2019; Kelly and Clarke, 2016). Sustainability has been defined as a process of mutually interacting socio-cultural, environmental, and socio-economic perspectives (United Nations, 2015). Policy documents put forward Education for Sustainability (EfS), as an adequate educational approach to prepare current and future generations for becoming change-makers capable of taking on sustainability challenges (e.g. UNESCO, 2017). EfS is a democratic educational approach that aims to empower students so they are capable of making their own decisions, rather than pushing them towards uncritical social reproduction (Audigier, 2000; Jickling & Wals, 2008). Currently, evidence of the effectiveness of Education for Sustainability was found (e.g. Olsson et al., 2022; Sass et al., submitted).

Education for sustainabilty

EfS consists of a holistic approach to sustainability problems (Stables & Scott, 2002; United Nations, 2019). Moreover, different perspectives are encouraged when developing actions that aim to contribute to sustainability (Van Poeck et al., 2019). Finally, EfS is oriented towards active student participation and action-taking in order to contribute to solving real-world problems (Sinakou et al., 2022; Varela-Losada et al., 2016). Consensus on the central learning outcome of this type of education is growing, with the concept of action competence appearing in the forefront of the academic discourse (Sass et al., 2020). However, so far no study has investigated more into detail how these different sub units of EfS relate to each other and if these differ according to the national and educational settings in which they occur. This research gap is addressed in this study.

In order to implement EfS, teachers need to employ a complex set of professional competences. However, evidence suggests that they often find themselves ill-equipped to take on this formidable task (Taylor et al., 2019; Boeve-de Pauw et al., 2022). The need for a tool that allows monitoring of quality education for sustainability teaching is apparent. Such a tool can allow us as a research community to study how EfS is put into practice and develops as teachers e.g. participate in (continuous) professional development. It may also be relevant for teachers to reflect on their current and desired practices concerning EfS.

The current study aims to propose and operationalise a Quality Education for Sustainability Teaching (QUEST) framework and research tool (QUEST-Q). Three research questions are central in the current study:

1. What content, educational approach (‘how’), partners (‘with whom’), and venues (‘where’) should be included in Quality Education for Sustainability Teaching?

Guided by the literature, we look into the ‘what’ of teaching (i.e. content in terms of knowledge and skills), the ‘how’ of an action-oriented EfS approach, with whom, and where is taught and learnt.

2. How can QUEST be measured?

Starting from the proposed QUEST framework, we aim to provide a novel measurement instrument developing Swedish and Dutch versions of a questionnaire (the QUEST-Q) fit to answer the third research question. In line with the emancipatory character of education for sustainability, we take the point of view of students into account. In order to do so, we will develop a questionnaire for tapping into their experiences with EfS at secondary school.

3. How do Flemish, Dutch, and Swedish higher secondary students experience EfS teaching at their school?

At ECER, we will provide results regarding the quality of the QUEST-Q (i.e. reliability and validity of the questionnaire) and describe how Flemish, Dutch, and Swedish upper secondary students experience Education for Sustainability Teaching at their school as measured by means of the QUEST-Q.

This research was commissioned in August 2022 by the Scottish Government as part of the refresh of the Learning for Sustainability 2030 Action Plan (2019). Researchers at the University of Dundee were asked to investigate the following questions.

• How is learning for sustainability (LfS) understood and implemented by the school and Community Learning and Development (CLD) workforce?
• What can we learn from LfS ‘best practice’ taking place around the system?
• What do the voices of young people and practitioners say and how do we feed them directly into LfS policy and the refresh of the Action Plan?
• What are the successes and challenges LfS has faced since 2019?
• What is the impact of the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) on LfS?

This research work is predicated on the Scottish Government’s Action Plan for Learning for Sustainability (2019), stating that children and young people in Scotland have an entitlement to learn about sustainability. Set against a backdrop of sustainability-related activities and toward the end of the UN’s Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2014, Higgins (2012) reported that the Scottish Government’s commitment to develop the concept of ‘One Planet Schools’ had taken on added significance if the intention to maintain the momentum and build on work that had occurred during the UN Decade for Sustainable Development was to be realised. This work culminated in the 2016 Vision 2030+ report which recommended five priorities for LfS (see conclusion). These priorities were also used to outline the key findings and recommendations for action in the current research and highlight what has been successful and where new approaches need to be considered.

A mixed methods approach was undertaken for this small-sample research using a JISC online survey, World Café events and 3 Horizons focus groups (see methodology below). Sampling for the survey and in person data collection was designed with a mix of urban, semi- urban, rural locations including the highlands and Islands to be representative of the Scottish population. A range of socio-economic parameters was also applied using the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SMID) with participants from all major quantiles represented. At each site the researchers engaged with young people 14+ years and separately with practitioners in secondary schools and CLD settings. In total there were 16 separate in-person engagements across Scotland with 80 individual transcripts recorded and shared across the research team for analysis. Analysis was conducted using the Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA) (Braun & Clarke, 2012, 2019) process using NVivo for managing coding and developing themes. Given the mixed methods approach, survey data is represented through a number of graphs, with the qualitative data represented through thematic narratives and graphics.

The main findings represent an expansion of the earlier work and include new proposals for the Learning for Sustainability Action Plan refresh. The findings and analysis provide a snapshot of what is currently happening in Scotland and a clear picture of what stakeholders would like to see happening to support LfS in secondary schools and CLD settings. Calls to action from the Children’s Parliament research with children from nursery to S3 were also correlated in our findings to demonstrate a synthesis across of the research findings of both projects. The findings from this project will be disseminated in the ECER Paper session with the lapsing of the information embargo at the time of publication of the research report by the Scottish Government.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8586-294X

In light of global challenges like climate change it is now argued in policy that there is a need for educational interventions to support students to understand and be able to act on sustainability issues. Open schooling is such a policy innovation that aligns with SDG 4 Target 7 to foster students’ relations with sustainability questions in the local environment to develop skills and competencies to create new visions of the future through action (UNESCO, 2017). Open schooling contains an explicit ambition to identify, investigate and act on sustainability problems in the local community. (Van Poeck, et al., 2021a)

The research on open schooling is limited to studies that look at different teaching and learning approaches that could be included as part of ‘open schooling’ (Okada et al., 2020) Few studies look at the challenges that teachers and students face while implementing open schooling as it causes disturbance in their everyday habits of teaching and learning. Van Poeck et al. (2021b) identified disturbances in teaching habits for example, difficulties to design lessons starting from a sustainability challenge which relates to the disturbed habit of using the curriculum as a driver for lesson planning and, difficulties to plan lessons that take students along in an authentic quest for solutions which is related to the disturbed habit of teaching as lecturing. This paper follows up on previous work on the disturbances in teaching habits with the aim to identify challenges (disturbance in habits) as well as the affordances that students face in their everyday practice while doing school work. Here we draw on an investigation from one Swedish school done within a four-year research project called ‘Open schooling for sustainable cities and communities. The investigation should be perceived as an explorative case-study.

The theoretical framework underpinning this study is a transactional learning theory (Östman et al. 2019a) based on the pragmatist work of John Dewey (1916). According to this theory we act without reflecting in our everyday lives, in and through our habits. We start to reflect when our habits are disturbed, and do not function in a specific situation creating a problematic situation (Dewey, 1929) which needs attention (cognitively and/or bodily) if we are to continue with the activity we were involved in. We then engage in an “inquiry” which involves experimentations making the problematic situation more intelligible. An inquiry process can be short but can also require considerable time and energy. It can involve acquisition of new knowledge, skills, values, identities, etc. and can result in an enrichment or transformation of a habit or even the start of a new habit. Also highlighted in this theory is the bodily felt experiences (joy, excitement, etc.) that occur when the inquiry has succeeded. Dewey (1934) describe these experiences as aesthetical experiences of fulfillment and if they are strong the whole process from disturbance to fulfillment is remembered as “an experience”. Such experiences that stand out in the flow of experiences can be a crucial starting point for development of interests and attitudes (Dewey, 1934).

The empirical questions that guide our study are:

1. What problematic situations do students face while doing open schooling projects?
2. Which habits of students, used in everyday school work, are disturbed in relation to the problematic situations identified?
3. Which, if any, positive experiences did the students have and which activities were they connected to?

The Scandinavian and European approaches to teaching in forest schools is pedagogically diverse (Buchan 2015; Norðdahl & Jóhannesson 2015). For example, some countries follow prescriptive forest school practices that include specific and tailored teacher training, whereas others have few formalised pedagogical practices (Leather 2018; Waite & Goodenough 2018). In Australia, there is a tradition of learning in the outdoors and forest schools have been influential in the development of Australian nature kindergartens, often known as bush kinders (Christiansen et al. 2018). This type of early years’ outdoor learning gained momentum, predominantly stemming from one pilot bush kinder that began in 2011 in a major metropolitan city. Since then, bush kinder programs have rapidly increased in their number and popularity. As bush kinders in Australia continue to proliferate, our research into bush kinders has found that there are a range of pedagogical approaches that guides teachers’ practice with nature pedagogy. Important to this in Australia is the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) document (DEEWR, 2009) which provides a broad perspective on the benefits that learning in the outdoors has for children.

Bush kinder approaches and structures are emergent, depending on factors such as context, staffing and policy development. As this study illustrates, guidance provided to educators and bush kinder teaching approaches are not necessarily a focus in initial teacher education courses. Professional learning specifically for bush kinders is only just developing suggesting that experienced teachers are reliant on their own knowledge and experience of teaching in the outdoors (Campbell & Speldewinde 2018). This is important because the bush kinder context is one that presents a range of challenges that differ from the traditional classroom environment. Limited teacher education in this area provides early childhood professionals with a predicament as they determine their pedagogical approach without the backing of empirical research. There is growing but limited scholarship that often speaks to contexts that differ significantly from those that the individual teacher experience. This creates the dilemma of what is appropriate pedagogically for bush kinders. Our fieldwork led us to consider the research question: How does STEM teaching and learning occur in nature-based settings such as a bush kinder?

The fieldwork observations associated with this research project drew our attention to the different pedagogical approaches used by the teachers we observed. The ethnographic research method drawn on for this study (Speldewinde, 2022a), is one that allows for an emergent research design, drawing on the work from Stan and Humberstone (2011). We were able to focus our investigation of the field sites to the way educators were approaching teaching STEM in the bush kinder context (Speldewinde, 2022) and the types of pedagogical approaches educators were applying. This presentation examines those different pedagogical approaches in bush kinders using an ethnographic lens of how pedagogy translates into STEM teaching and learning practice in this early years learning context. Ethnography was valuable here because it enabled us to observe bush kinder teacher behaviour as it occurred (Speldewinde, 2022a). This is important as bush kinder pedagogies are currently evolving with more and more sites proliferating. Ethnography also allowed us to consider the potential and opportunities for bush kinder teaching as we were not limited to one ongoing event, but rather many events occurring simultaneously. As this was the case, we employed a number of ethnographic methods to gather data, which included listening, watching, and participating. ‘Being with people as they conducted their everyday duties’ both regularly and fleetingly (Forsey 2010, p. 569) lent itself to us considering ethnography as an appropriate methodology.

General description on research questions, objectives

Sustainability issues are characterized by a high degree of complexity and uncertainties, without obvious answers (Lönngren & Van Poeck, 2021) and researchers are investigating how to handle this in educational settings (Bascope, Perasso & Reiss, 2019). Sustainability problems often contain conflicting opinions concerning how to act, and to avoid normative teaching a teacher can stimulate questioning and critically assessing habits and what is taken for granted (Van Poeck, 2019). It is therefore important for preschool teachers to highlight different perspectives, values ​​and arguments in the teaching situation. A pluralistic teaching that links facts and values ​​can afford children to try different proposals for sustainable solutions (Hedefalk, Caiman & Ottander, 2022). Hence, the teacher needs to create learning situations where children listen to each other and challenge each other’s ideas with the common ambition to solve a sustainability problem (Englund 2006).

Researchers also suggest that the teacher needs to listen to children’s questions (Halvars, 2021) to understand their perspectives, to create teaching situations where agency is at a fore (Siry & Brendel, 2016). It appears to be a consensus among researchers that little attention is paid to children’s agency about sustainability issues (e.g. Borg & Pramling Samuelsson, 2022). Borg and Pramling Samuelsson (2022) have investigated agency in the Swedish curriculum for preschool. The result show that in the curriculum, children is described as competent to actively participate and influence their learning. In this study we investigate how the curriculum's goals is translated into actions in practice. Researchers mean that teachers often show an urge to take over the teaching content which hinder children's agency (Grindheim et al., 2019). Hence, for agency to arise, teacher’s actions seem to be important.

Agency is not something children “have”, it emerges in interactions (Caiman & Lundegård, 2014). We broadly defined agency as children’s ability to influence their own learning in a teaching situation, having your voice heard and your opinions respected (cf. Hedefalk, Caiman, Ottander, & Almqvist, 2020; Halvars, 2021). Houen (2016) discovered that teacher’s questions in line with “I wonder…” opened up for agency. Halvars and colleagues (2022) took another focus; how agency emerge when preschool teachers immerse themselves into children’s questions.

In this study we investigate what enables agency by analyzing preschool teachers’ actions in teaching situations. Research question: what actions result in agency in a teaching project for sustainable development?

Theoretical framework

To understand the meaning making process in a teaching situation, we use pragmatism (Dewey, 1938/1997). According to this action-oriented theory, meaning making is observable in actions and in a context. The context in this study is the location of a preschool where children participate in teaching situations with a focus to develop knowledge about sustainable consumption. The analysis of meaning making begins when these children encounter an urgent problem that occurs as the children's previous habits are challenged (c.f Van Poeck & Östman, 2020 p. 6). In this case, the teacher creates a problem as she questions the sustainability of the fruit these children are consuming. We use epistemological move analysis (EMA) to analyze how the teacher privileges certain actions and exclude others in the teaching situation. By privileging some things over others, meaning-making takes a certain direction and in this study we are interested in what actions privilege agency in teaching situations with the aim to develop knowledge about sustainable consumption. Previous research has found several moves, most common in science education is: confirming, reconstructing, instructive, generating and reorienting moves (Lidar, Lundqvist & Östman, 2006).

We live in peculiar times, a time where humans relationship to nature is high on the agenda and referred to in various ways: as Anthropocene (Crutzen, 2006; Steffen et al., 2007) as Capitalocene (Malm, 2019; Malm & Hornborg, 2014; Moore, 2016) and Chthulucene (Haraway, 2016) just to mention some. In this study the Anthropocene concept, originally a suggested name of a geological time period to mark humans’ substantial impact on planet earth (Steffen et al., 2007), is used as an underpinning to stress the need for studies concerning human/nature relations in this peculiar time. In Sweden “nature” can be seen as a part of preschools aim and practice in several ways. This is stemming from a long tradition of connecting children to nature through natural environments but also as a part of the educational system, articulated in the curricula connected to science education, sustainable development, health and wellbeing (Halldén, 2011; National Agency of Education, 2018). More than half a million children in Sweden attend preschool which is roughly 85 percent of all children in the age 1-5 and 95 percent of all children over 4 years (SKR, 2020). Preschool is today a significant part of childhood and preschool is not only situated in these challenging times, of Anthropocene, but education is often also seen as a part of the solution to rising challenges (Gilbert, 2022; Jickling & Sterling, 2017; Somerville & Williams, 2015; Wolff et al., 2020). With preschool now as a part of the Swedish educational system situated, in the time of Anthropocene, it becomes relevant to further investigate and understand nature’s role in preschool, how it is enacted and upheld, with children, preschool staff, materials, surroundings, organization, policy, ideas, and discourses.

In a literature review Sjögren (2020) looks at how the relationship between children and nature is described in articles with a focus on Anthropocene in early childhood education (ECE) and comes to the conclusion that the most common view of the child’s relationship to nature can be described as entangled. This entangled child is described in the articles as “interdependent”, “relational” and “connected”, and builds on the notion that it is impossible to separate culture from nature (Sjögren, 2020 s. 5-6). This review also shows that when a post human perspective is used to approach nature and ECE there seems to be a lack of power perspectives (Sjögren, 2020). With an actor-network theory (ANT) approach this PhD project takes an interest in not only that children are entangled but how these entanglements are created, enacted, and upheld, by whom and where. These aspects of ANT, developed by for instance Mol (1999, 2002, 2010) also says something about the power relations between the actors involved, which means all actors, between human actors as well as other-than human actors. With an ANT inspired ethnographic method, the idea with the present project is to understand how “nature” is made, upheld, and translated, in an organization as preschool, that has such a strong tie to nature both historically and in the present.

The challenge of tackling climate change calls for transformative educational approaches which prepare young people to navigate ongoing and future crises, loading heavy expectations on the shoulders of education (Reid 2019). Climate change education (CCE) refers to such teaching and learning that is connected to climate change. Yet, CCE is more than just learning about the content and facts of climate change: it is interdisciplinary, holistic, and aims to support transformation, active citizenship, and hope (Cantell et al. 2019; Kagawa & Selby 2010). Its learning process is flexible and social (Stevenson, Nicholls & Whitehouse 2017). It is not separate from other environment or sustainability related “educations” but can rather be described as environmental education or education for sustainable development that is executed through the lens of climate change.  

For an educator, climate change is a complex topic to teach. Not only does it demand a lot from the teacher regarding mastery of subject matter, but it may also be an emotionally challenging topic and requires successful communication between teachers and learners. According to previous research, didactic approaches to CCE have been inefficient in affecting students’ attitudes and behaviour (Rousell & Cutter-MacKenzie-Knowles 2020). Recognising this, researchers call for participatory, interdisciplinary, creative, and affect-driven approaches to CCE, and awareness of values, worldview, and identity formation. In practice, however, teachers tend to concentrate on teaching natural scientific information about climate issues instead of embracing this kind of holistic approach (Monroe et al. 2019). A teacher may consider that having an emphasis on values and worldviews in education is difficult to implement or even to be unethical indoctrination (Aarnio-Linnanvuori 2018). European schools tend to uphold liberal educational values such as critical thinking and respect of diversity, and therefore strive for neutrality in many moral issues (van der Kooij et al. 2015). In both CCE and worldview education literature this aim has been challenged: neutral ground in worldview and moral discussions does not exist, and the seriousness of the ecological crisis requires deconstructing unsustainable cultural beliefs and developing worldviews that rely on empathy towards the more-than-human nature (Zilliacus & Wolff 2021; Värri 2019; Rissanen & Poulter, forthcoming). This should be executed in an educational environment that grows more diverse what comes to cultural, religious, and other worldview backgrounds of learners.

How, then, can climate change education be developed to a more worldview considerate direction? In this presentation, we present perceptions of 19 secondary school teachers and 17 nonformal educators from four European countries (Finland, Ireland, Italy, and UK). The study is part of European Consortium CCC-CATAPULT (Challenging the Climate Crisis: Children’s Agency to Tackle Policy Underpinned by Learning for Transformation). The purpose of the study is to find out, to what extend do supporters of climate learning consider worldview formation to be a central aim in their work. How do they advance it? What are the challenges of climate change education that the interviewees recognize?

Based on a content analysis of qualitative interviews, we argue that teachers and nonformal educators need tools and support to embrace a worldview considerate approach to climate change education. Some of our interviewees had been able to develop educational methods to help young people to reflect their beliefs and attitudes concerning climate change, but others felt that they were struggling. Based on our data, we also suggest ideas of how to develop climate change education towards a worldview considerate direction.

Education is considered key in not only creating more sustainable communities (UN, 2015) but also in tackling climate change (UNESCO, 2010, 2020) through adaptation, mitigation (Anderson, 2012; Kagawa & Selby, 2012), and radical socio-economic change (e.g., Jickling, 2013; Selby & Kagawa, 2013, 2018; Tannock, 2021). In this paper, I discuss whether education is up to this task and the ways in which it can respond to climate change and other massive sustainability crises.

Addressing education as a response to climate change is interesting as theoretical developments, and especially the advent of new materialism challenge enlightenment thought that dominates much of Western education (Ricken & Masschelein, 2010). New materialist approaches emphasize the enmeshment of the human with the more-than-human. They highlight realism, embodiment, affectivity, relationality, non-anthropocentrism, and an ethics of solidarity and care.

Here, I draw on two approaches associated with new materialism: agential realism and object-oriented ontology. Despite their theoretical pitfalls, these two approaches offer two fruitful dimensions that can be used to think education with, especially in times of crisis: the agentic character of matter and humans’ limited accessibility to the world. These perspectives problematize ideas of knowing agents and skillful, deliberate actions; in doing so, they question the accounts of pro-environmental engagement that are commonly thought of along the lines of knowledge, hope, and action.

I will present two arguments. First, agential realism and object-oriented ontology challenge the basic premises on which much of modern educational thinking rests. They open a rift between educational ambitions and the premises education rests on—between what we want education to do and what education can achieve—thereby shaking education’s obsession with light and, eventually, the idea of educating for a specific purpose, especially that of sustainability. The alternative these two theories offer, I suggest, is a Bildung-perspective: being and becoming human in a world rife with struggle and contingency.

The second argument concerns the role of care and solidarity. Framing climate change through the lenses of agential realism and object-oriented ontology, I will highlight, especially evoke dystopian images—and the need for education to deal with grief and changing lifeworlds. A crucial task for education, then, in times of crisis, is to foster an ethics of care and solidarity. Such a focus, however, has been criticized as being merely therapeutic, one that overlooks the structural challenges that produce distress (Amsler, 2011). My take here is different. As I will discuss in more detail, solidarity and care align with Kropotkin’s (1902) concept of ‘mutual aid’. In the face of hostile conditions, they can, as part of education, work as a means of entering into new relations and can develop into ontological and political forces.

To frame this discussion, I develop the metaphor of ‘shades of blue’ for education in times of crisis. This metaphor is inspired by and advances Levitas’ (2007, 2013) work, which acknowledges the strong association of utopia with blue. Blue is perceived as an existential color and can be further related to dystopian images, to issues of power and force, and to solidarity and care. Framing education within ‘shades of blue’ offers an alternative to the predominant conception of education as the light that illuminates the dark—an idea that builds on the modern ideals of insight, growth, and progression (Stock, 2021).

Many strategies for scientific communication (in both policy and education) still focus on mainly conveying facts more clearly. This despite the research on scientific education and communication that over the past 20 years clearly shows how this type of communication is limited in order to bring about real change and commitment (Fedele et al, 2019; Håkansson et al. 2020). In relation to climate change which often is grounded within science education, this becomes problematic. Hence, since the fact-based science education brings its entangled objective, positivistic approach of understanding the world, (i.e., the subject/object, nature/culture divide, Latour 2014; 2018), this may risk the students to identify themselves as more or less passive observers and not part of the climate processes (Verlie, 2019). As well there still is the shadow of “the Truth”, revealing itself through the scientific knowledge, even in relation to complex issues as climate change.

Creating knowledge about the climate crises involves more than education of natural and social sciences. This means being attentive to the ways in which our knowledge and the material dimensions of the world around us, the social orders we live by, and the normative values we share are all intertwined (Barad, 2007; Haraway 2017). This study rests on the assumption that the different ways we live and act, also relates to what we know and how we experience the world around us. “Knowing is a matter of intra-acting” as Barad puts it (2017, p. 149).

This study deals with the phenomena of climate change as discursive practices entangled with social, ethical and material intra-actions, as relations that have a performative nature and real effects (Verlie, 2019). In this study time is of specific interest, revealing entanglements of socio-material intra-actions as different climate change becomings of response-ability.

Since 2018 new social movements of activists addressing the climate and ecological crises has rapidly grown. Extinction rebellion (XR) is an example of a grass root movement engaged in the climate and ecological crises and societal transformation, with a tremendous growth of international active members and a growing attention in media within a short time. Hence an interesting entrance of this study, is to explore intra-actions of climate change becomings in their actions. This is particularly interesting to investigate during a period when scientific facts about climate change and different requirements for environmental considerations are being questioned.

To explore how climate change may be (re)configured trough intra-actions, I started this relational exploration in the summer of 2021, when Extinction Rebellion (XR) rang the bell for a Nordic Rebellion. A call that echoed on social media to address the Nordic countries to uprise for a mass action of civil disobedience. Carbon as an economic oil resource and a threat to life were in the centre of these actions. The initiative called upon devoted and new rebels to make a difference in Oslo, in the arising time-window of opportunity, pending the nearby Norwegian parliamentary elections in September 2021.

To experience and take part of performed entangled assemblages, I placed myself in the middle of some of these performing actions. The central question guiding this study: How may phenomena of climate change becomings be experienced as meaning that matters during (intra-)actions of Extinction Rebellions actions?

We live in a society in which few things remain untouched by technology. It is increasingly difficult to escape from screens and the hyperconnectivity they entail, even for the youngest generations. We live in an Onlife world where children are getting used to live in artificial and online environments from very early ages. New generations spend more a more time connected to the internet (Auxier et al., 2020; Murciano-Hueso et al., 2022). Meanwhile, the literature shows that children and adolescents are increasingly experimenting the so called Nature Deficit Disorder, understanding as the suffering of a range of physical, psychological and behavioral problems due to our lack of contact with nature (De Tapia-Martín & Salvado, 2021; Louv, 2005).

For western children, contact with nature decreases even more as they grow, showing a similar pattern in countries such as the United Kingdom (Hughes, 2019), Germany (Lefländer et al., 2013) or Canada (Crawford et al., 2017). There are studies that relate the Nature Deficit Disorder with the urban lifestyle (Collado y Corraliza, 2016). Even current studies show that many children, despite having natural environments in their city, do not visit them due to the lack of security perceived by their parents (Chawla, 2020). That is why this future generation has already been called “backseat generation” and “bubble-wrap generation” (Chawla, 2020; Novotny, et al., 2021).

It is a fact that contact with nature from childhood influences the construction of our ecological identity (Fretwell & Greig, 2019), even the contact with nature is related with mental, physical and spiritual health benefits (Broom, 2017; Berrera-Hernández et al., 2014). For example, some studies have shown that contact with nature significantly reduces symptoms of ADHD and obesity (Mygind et al., 2021). Human beings perceived the world through our five senses and it is precisely the contact with nature that allows us to smell, see, touch, taste and hear. By contrary, screens and digital devices are only able to show us the world through visual and sound stimuli (Kilbey, 2018). This new reality poses a challenge for educational arena. We need to study how this generation is connected with nature in a digitized world and provide answers on how to educate the new generations in ecological awareness.

In line with the above we present the first results of two national projects called “NATEC-ID. Analysis of the processes of (dis-re) connection with NAture and TEchnology when building a child's IDentity” and “NaturTEC-Kids. Disruptive technology as a catalyst for the ecological transition from environmental education. Study and design of techno-educational solutions from NaturTEC Kids Living Lab”. The study sets out from the idea that we need to embrace the benefits and potential of digital technologies to generate solutions that allow us to (re)connect the new generations with nature environment. That is why this project seeks the development of a technological solution for learning in natural environments. Three objectives are pursued: 1) To analyze the main indicators that allow children and adolescents to learn and connect with nature. 2) To create the NaturTEC-Kids Living Lab, and 3) To design a technological solution with the participation of children and adolescents. For this purpose, we present the first results from a qualitative study. The results obtained so far have allowed us to obtain a first assessment of the mechanisms that facilitate the nature-technology binomial.

Brief description: Schools are platforms for learning about our environment and its protection. Despite being faced with the same learning opportunities, however, learning outcomes are very heterogeneous. In this study, 261 students participated in a 180 minutes educational program about the forest ecosystem and related sustainability topics. The learning module was based on 8-station and relied on a student-centered learning approach, i.e., collaborative, hands-on, and autonomy-supportive. Environmental knowledge was measured at three times, that is prior to the program (pre-test), right after program completion (post-test), and six weeks after program completion to test long-term learning (retention-test). Knowledge scores increased right after program completion and decreased in the retention-test, though retention-scores remained considerably above pre-test scores. We were also interested in environmental attitude’s role in learning. Attitude considerably affected knowledge scores of each test time, while the effects on pre- and retention-scores were larger. Surprisingly, retention-scores of those students with highest attitude scores exceeded their post-program attitude scores.

More details:

Research questions:

• To what extend do students gain and retain environmental knowledge about the forest ecosystem and related sustainabiltiy topics over the course of a student-centered educational programme?
• How does environmental attitude relate to knowledge scores prior to, right after, and six weeks after the educational programme? To what extend does environmental attitude help students gain and retain their environmental knowledge?

Pedagogical framework: The study is based on a 8-station module that relies on a collaborative, hands-on, and autonomy-supportive learning approach. Since it is not only important to highlight environmental attitude's role in learning, we briefly describe the learning module and those elements that (most likely) promote environmental attitude in a classroom setting. There is thus a focus on pedagogical approaches: collaborative learning, Deci and Ryan's (2012) self-determination theory, and a hands-on learning. Those are the title's and is thus the content of the 8 work stations:

1. The forest and its trees
2. The age of trees
3. Forest litter
4. Forest pollution
5. Deadwood and its inhabitants
6. Hunters of the night – bats
7. Are trees made of air?
8. Ecological footprint

Methodological/ statistical framework: To calibrate environmental knowledge and attitude, we rely on the Campbell Paradigm (Kaiser et al., 2010). The paradigm says that a person's attitude and the cost invovled in a behavior affect the likelihood that a behavior will be carried out (i.e., pro-environmental behavior). In this line, the calibration provides two critical outputs: It gives an estimation of each item's difficulty (i.e., how demanding it is to agree with a statement or engage in a certain behavior) and an estimation of a person's attitude (derived from the type and amount of agreement and engagement in the items given). The calibration thus allows to point at critical statements/ behaviors that can be lowered through external prompts/ incentives/ etc. or through strengthening environmental attitudes.

Young people expect to be educated about climate change and sustainability (Royal Society of Chemistry, 2021), in order to take an active role in addressing the disproportion of anthropogenic mass to biomass globally and the current imbalance between species on Earth. Traditional educational approaches seldom address connections between disciplines and levels of knowledge, and so new teaching strategies are needed that position students (and their educators) to identify the economic, social and environmental aspects that have impacted the formation of the science that they learn in the classroom. Students are then more able to describe the relationships between these different levels and so realize the interconnectedness of modern society, in order to better understand the complex real-world contexts and critical challenges (such as those related to the United Nations Global Goals for Sustainable Development) that are making their futures uncertain (Gilbert, 2016).

In some ways, this has been recognised by governments worldwide, with mandated curricula being updated to include sustainable development-relevant socio-scientific issues (SSIs), for example in the United States’ Next Generation Science Standards and in the Australian National Curriculum. However, a recent global survey of national curriculum documents from 48 countries in 2020, published in the Learn for our Planet report (UNESCO, 2021) found that less than half of national curriculum documents made mention of climate change explicitly. With respect to chemistry education, this misalignment between curriculum policy and global priorities has been referred to as the “untenable disconnect” (Talanquer et al, 2020, p. 2697) between the type of chemical understanding students learn and the ways that students will need to be able to think and act in order to critically address global challenges.

Over the past few years, chemistry educators have increasingly called for chemistry education to be restructured to incorporate sustainability concepts through a Systems Thinking approach (Mahaffy et al, 2019). Systems thinking, as an educative approach, can be defined as an approach that incorporates the complexity of the whole system (such as a chemical process) in a holistic manner, including intended and unintended consequences (Delaney et al, 2021). Systems Thinking in Chemistry Education (STICE) has been claimed to benefit student learning through developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills (York and Orgill, 2020). Although teachers have shown enthusiasm for STICE, they need to be supported with appropriate professional learning opportunities and resources to be able to adopt STICE methods (Delaney et al, 2021). It needs to be acknowledged as well that any teaching or curriculum innovation needs to fit into an extremely crowded curriculum (Timms et al, 2018). Thus, it is critical to find strategies that teachers can easily use in their classrooms to teach STICE and engage students to explore this way of analysing problems.

This presentation explores the outcomes of a recently implemented systems thinking-oriented professional learning program, through activity responses collected from students and teachers and semi-structured interviews with the teachers. The program supported secondary chemistry teachers to integrate systems thinking and socio-scientific issues such as climate change and sustainable development into their chemistry classroom through a mapping activity (Schultz et al, 2022). One way to support students to integrate new information into their knowledge structures, and to identify and describe the relationships between at-first-glance unrelated aspects of knowledge (such as economic, environmental, social, and human levels) is through a mapping exercise. Here, the purpose of the mapping exercises was to provide opportunities for students to explore and express concepts and connections related to specific chemical or manufacturing processes, as a way to develop their systems thinking capacity.

This paper reports on a research project based in Australia that engaged experts from the United States, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Australia called: Inquiry Arts Pedagogies and Experiential Nature Education (IAPENE). It focused on early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) which has become an increasing feature within the broader education for sustainability movement internationally (Rousell & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2020). The introduction of bush kindergarten programs (Warden, 2012), forest schools, engagement in community greening projects and children’s wild play gardens (, Dobia, Truong, Ward & Regalado, 2019; Royal Botanic Gardens, 2017), as well as legislative requirements (Little, Elliot & Wyver, 2017a) are evidence of proliferation of activity in this field. The need for engagement in ECEfS is clearly articulated by numerous researchers (Aitken, Hunt, Roy & Sajfar, 2012; Duhn, 2012; Cutter-Mackenzie & Edwards, 2013; Ward, 2013; Rousell & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2020) who assert that young children have a right to sustainability/climate change education and facilitation of their engagement and connection with the natural world.

Theories related to connection with the natural world begin with those situated in the Anthropocentric discourse (Crutzen & Ramanathan, 2000) and include biophilia (Wilson, 1984), ecopsychology (Roszak, 2001) and place-based education (Sobel, 2005; Somerville., 2012). More recently post-humanist approaches to being one with the natural world (Malone, K., Moore & Ward, 2019; Malone, Karen., Tesar & Arndt, 2020) purposely decenter the human, and theorise planetary co-existence with a focus on regenerative paradigms that reject neo-liberal constructions of society with its focus on consumption, profit and Growth (Jickling, 2017). This research draws upon these theories and builds upon them through Econnection (See conclusion).

The research was conducted in two parts: The first consisted of consulting internationally with community arts and sustainability practitioners, early childhood educators, academics and teachers about the value and meaning of ECEfS and the way in which it could be further explored in early childhood settings using the arts. The arts are a standard inclusion in the early childhood program and present an opportunity for multimodal investigation and perception (Eisner, 2002; Judson & Egan, 2012) that facilitates a focus on the natural world as educational content, highlighting the local environments of children’s home and early childhood settings (Ward, 2017a). Analysis and consolidation of the stage 1 participant perspectives demonstrated strong synergies about the arts-infused curriculum and resulted in a series of Principles, Reflections and Practices that were developed as a pedagogical tool (Ward, 2017b) alongside the emerging theory of Econnection: Eco as in ecology and nnection as in connection. The second part of the research engaged early childhood educators in using the IAPENE pedagogical tool and Econnection for integrating sustainability education with arts-based curriculum and pedagogies to facilitate an increase in content related to the natural world and to normalize this content with a focus on place.

The research outcomes included the IAPENE Pedagogical tool, validated in stage 2, and theory of Econnection which were developed originally in the education context of early childhood. However, Econnection and the Principles, Reflections and Practices are equally relevant for young people in primary and secondary school. Five years on, and in the midst of a climate crisis, the relevance of this work has intensified and now forms the basis of blog conversations with educators about sustainability education in Scotland, the UK more broadly and internationally. These conversations, based on the Principle, Reflections and Practices (Ward, 2017b) bring the research into the present and highlight the need for working with educators to support their practice in incorporating learning for sustainability into their classrooms in a manner that supports children’s learning and agency as active citizens (Jickling, 2017).

The presentation, in which I plan to argue the current need of the sustainable pedagogy of place, including a haunted place, will be framed by Derrida’s hauntology (the word ‘hauntology’ as a play on the word ‘ontology’ which sounds like hauntology in French). Whereas traditional ontology provides taxonomies of things that exist, hauntology is an ontology of a specter, a being whose existence is not clearly defined, and its presence – like its absence – is uncertain regarding time and space / place. My earlier study and discoveries about the sense of the public (Mendel, 2022) mean that, on the one hand, one wants to free the present from the haunting. On the other hand, one wants to reclaim the sense of the public that comes from the past. In both cases, the conversation with the inheritance from past generations – which is the specter of the ‘public’ – takes place in the present and for the future in the name of justice. This ethical postulate underlies Derrida’s thought. As he wrote about ‘Specters of Marx’, ‘one must, magically, chase away a specter, exorcise the possible return of a power held to be baleful in itself and whose demonic threat continues to haunt the century’ (Derrida,1994: 120). To do this we should learn justice ‘from the ghost’ (221). Derrida, recommending sensitivity to the specters, learning from them, and talking to them [‘It is necessary to speak of the ghost, indeed to the ghost and with it (xix)], warns against seduction. Obsessions established ideas and ideologies are expression of the fact that we have been seduced by the specters and they, instead of us, speak using our voice. To better understand this aspect of Derrida’s thoughts, you can refer to the author of Real Cities, Steve Pile, who accurately reconstructed Derrida’s model of haunting and the ghost. For Pile,

to create an equitable, fair, and democratic city, we must take into account the dead, but not become possessed by them . . . We cannot ignore the dead, otherwise we may never learn from them, nor will we honour them. But nor can we endlessly and melancholically entrapped in the relentless, drowning flow of their history. London’s ghosts have, on occasion, proved to be a liability. What is true for London, is also true for New Orleans, Berlin, Singapore, Paris, New York and, possibly, every other city too. Cities cannot simply give up the ghost. Even the physical structures themselves – or the gaps they leave behind when they ‘pass on’ – can become ghosts’ (2005: 160–161).

On the one hand, the hauntology particularly addresses the non-humans, the specters, which act in specific time (out of joint) and place (haunted). On the other, haunting belongs to the human thought about the structure of every hegemony. Time and place are at the center of (re)thinking hauntology and its political, social, and materialist implications (cf. Bozalek et al. 2021: 1). Doing this via educational thought, which I propose, might make it useful in a practical dimension, more and more important in light of the ongoing crisis of life on Earth.

In my empirical study, I was looking for traces of the existence of local ghosts in the statements of interviewed inhabitants of Gdansk. In the thematic content analysis of the interviews, I was interested in discontinuities, ‘bends’ of local memory, in which specters could reveal their actions. The results led to prospective conclusions, including the recommendation of the concept of sustainable pedagogy of place, sensitive to ghosts and haunted places.

The paper presents findings from a three-years research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, addressing the question of how student beliefs on global issues are dealt with in lower-secondary schools. Whereas this paper will focus on teacher practices and respective motivations, Stefanie Rinaldi will submit a second paper looking at recurring belief patterns that emerged in focus group discussions with students.

Global issues per definition are “[i]ssues or problems that affect most nations around the world, that cannot be solved by any single nation, and that show our increasing interdependence” (Hite & Seitz, 2016, p. 319). Furthermore, they require “interdisciplinary knowledge” (Hite & Seitz, 2016, p. 319) to be addressed. Although this definition includes the need for interdisciplinary cooperation, it lacks the regulatory component (global regulatory approach), which plays a role in the global development of multiple areas (Bhargava, 2006). The complexity of global issues should be emphasised, as it can be differentiated into various components. In the field of education, the concept of dual complexity divides global issues into factual (fact-based) and ethical sublevels (Mehren et al., 2015). On these sublevels there are contradictory, non-transparent and not conclusively resolvable fields of tension as well as underlying value conflicts that result in factual and moral controversies that teachers are confronted with (Ohl, 2013). Due to their complex, controversial and dynamic dimensions, the inclusion of global issues pose great challenges to teachers. Adequate didactic preparation is further aggravated as no corresponding subject didactics exist (Barchuck & Harkins, 2010; Mosch, 2013).

Various studies on specific global issues show that students have beliefs in areas such as climate change (Chang & Pascua, 2016) or sustainability (Holfelder, 2018). In addition, it has been shown in different subject areas that it is a challenge for teachers to deal with these beliefs appropriately (Mosch, 2013; Hoppe et al., 2020).

It is widely accepted that addressing student beliefs in the context of teachers' pedagogical content knowledge represents a central component of professional competence (Baumert & Kunter, 2013; Sherin & van Es, 2009). Moreover, due to their controversial dimension, it can be assumed that teachers’ own beliefs have a decisive influence on the way student beliefs are solicited (Barkhau et al., 2021). Consequently, such content is often treated unsystematically in the classroom as dealing with global issues depends not only on the cognitive but also on the affective level of professional competence (Baumert & Kunter, 2013). Motivational orientations, which include intentions and preferences, play a crucial role regarding teacher performance, as they determine behaviours in the classroom (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Additionally, the Swiss Curriculum provides teachers with great leeway in integrating global issues (D-EDK, 2015). Didactic concepts and approaches in this area are only gradually emerging and therefore need to be further developed and supported by empirical evidence (Krogull, 2018). The theoretical and conceptual background shows that various areas of tension in the field of global issues within education exist. A study focusing on the interdisciplinary nature of such issues is so far missing. The present study aims to tackle this gap by addressing the following research questions

How do teachers deal with student beliefs about global issues?

Q1: What methods do secondary teachers use to deal with student beliefs about global issues?

Q2: How do teachers justify their intended and applied methodological decisions?

Q3: What relevance do teachers attribute to addressing student beliefs about global issues and how do they justify this attribution?

Education for sustainable development (ESD) gained significant momentum by adopting the Sustainable Development goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (2015). Global acceptance of ESD as an educational priority boosted ESD programs and related international collaborations worldwide. In Hungary the nationwide program of the Sustainability Thematic Week (STW) is announced by the Ministry of Human Capacities each year since 2016 with topics related to the different SDGs. A complex research program linked to the national STW was launched in 2020 to examine Hungarian primary and secondary school students’ environmental awareness. In 2022, PontVelem Ltd., the organizer of the STW and coordinator of the linked research program, initiated and supported a research resting on international cooperation in order to investigate environmental awareness and its shaping factors based on representative samples in three central European countries (Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia).

How pedagogical approach in ESD shapes environmental attitudes, pro-environmental behaviour and action competences is recently gaining more and more interest (Chen & Liu 2020, Sass et al. 2020). Action-oriented and transformative pedagogy promote students to become active participants by understanding and deliberating the causes and effects empower their capability of deliberating the causes and effects, and facilitate to construct visions for finding ellaborated strategies to overcome environmental issues. How specific pedagogical methods (Eames et al. 2006, Lozano et al. 2022) or different pedagogical approaches (Boeve-de Pauw et al. 2015) fit best to these requirements are subject of numerous studies, and still remains a potential fruitful field of environmental education research.

Our research investigates a) how teaching approach (holistic approach to content and pluralistic approach to teaching) in secondary school students is interconnected with their environmental attitudes, pro-environmental behaviour and action competences; b) does the pattern of this interconnectedness differ within the different countries represented in our study.

The global sustainability crisis calls for citizens with improved awareness, understanding and ability to take action against threatening challenges in society and in everyday life. Policymakers worldwide take initiatives that call on schools and teachers to contribute to this by implementing environmental and sustainability education (ESE) (e.g. UNESCO, 2017, SDG4, target 4.7). One of the educational innovations that schools are invited to implement, is so-called "open schooling", i.e. educational practices in schools that have an explicit ambition to identify, explore and tackle sustainability problems in the local community. The goal in open schooling is for schools to work in collaboration with local stakeholders, authorities, associations, businesses, etc. to contribute to constructive solutions to sustainability issues. Earlier didactic research has shown how policy-driven innovations can be challenging for teachers because they require a departure from habitual ways of thinking and acting. Many studies in science education have shown that implementation of policy innovations is a very complicated process in relation to for example teachers’ beliefs (see for example Wallace & Priestley 2011). Regarding teachers’ common way of teaching Lidar et al. (2020), for instance, show how the introduction of external examinations in primary school meant that teachers had to re-evaluate their teaching habits and coordinate their teaching to fit the new requirements. In relation to sustainability education Leemans (2022) argues that implementing a ‘whole school approach’, as UNESCO (2021) and governments (e.g. Onderwijsinspectie 2017) call for, challenges everyday routines in a class, school, and local community before such an education innovation can become part of the normal course of events.

In this paper, we identify and discuss several kinds of difficulties that teachers may experience in implementing policy-driven educational innovation through an explorative case study of open schooling practices in Sweden and Belgium. In particular, we investigate how schools implement open schooling through LORET - Locally Relevant Teaching (Östman et al. 2013), a methodology to plan locally relevant sustainable development teaching that is adapted to local needs/conditions while also allowing to teach subject knowledge and realize curriculum objectives. Our object of study is the design processes of teaching in workshops where educational researchers and teachers collaborate to co-produce LORET-based open schooling practices.

The paper is theoretically inspired by transactional theory on sustainability learning (Östman et al. 2019) based on the pragmatist work of John Dewey (1916, 1938) who approaches learning ‘transactionally’ (Dewey & Bentley 1949), i.e. as a consequence of individuals' coordination processes with the physical, social and institutional environment. A transactional learning theory posits that learning occurs in response to a ‘problematic situation’ (Dewey 1929). A problematic situation occur when our habitual ways of thinking and acting is disturbed: when we can’t continue as usual with the activity we are involved in. When encountering a problematic situation, we engage in inquiry through experimentation in order to find a solution, which can result in the acquisition of new knowledge, skills, values, identities, and so on. This process may involve a transformation of habits or the development of new habits. As such, pragmatism’s processual approach to the phases of habit, crisis and creativity that mark human action (Shilling 2008) offers us a useful framework to investigate how didactic innovation involves the disturbance of teaching habits.

Our analysis of the disturbance of teaching habits incited by the introduction of a new open schooling methodology is guided by the following research questions:

1. Which problematic situations occur?
2. What creates these problematic situations, in other words, which are the habits that are disturbed?

This presentation is based on the ECF4CLIM project (A European Competence Framework for a Low Carbon Economy and Sustainability through Education), funded by the European Green Deal / Horizon 2020 Programme. ECF4CLIM aims at developing, testing and validating a European Competence Framework for transformational change through a multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary and participatory process. Applying participatory action research (PAR), practitioner research (Heikkinen, deJong & Vanderlinde 2016) and citizen science approaches (Senabre, Perelló, Becker, Bonhoure, Legris & Cigarini 2021), it seeks to empower the educational communities in Finland, Portugal, Romania and Spain to act against climate change and towards sustainable development. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of the narrative analysis of the material generated in the crowdsourcing workshops where teachers, students, education experts and different stakeholders reflect what prevents and/or enables schools to implement sustainability education properly.

The research question of this study is: ‘What constrains and/or enables the implementation of sustainability education in schools?’ To answer to this question, we apply the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis 2022) which seeks to find the preceding factors, or social arrangements which prefigure our practices; in other words, make our social practices possible in the way they happen. These practice architectures consist of (1.) cultural-discursive, (2.) material-economic, and (3.) social-political arrangements which in turn prefigure how practices are constituted through (1.) discourses (‘sayings’), (2.) physical activities and actions (‘doings’), as well as (3.) power relations such as solidarity and loyalty (Kemmis 2022). These different dimensions are intertwined in our everyday practices. This understanding of social practices forms a natural continuum with the methodologies of participatory action research (Kemmis et al. 2015).

Various crowdsourcing practices were applied to outline what tools educators and other stakeholders have for promoting sustainability competences, and what hinders and promotes using them. Several workshops were conducted for various groups of stakeholders, such as teachers, student, experts and for social groups in a vulnerable position which do not usually have a voice in society.

The Norwegian 2020 curriculum renewal opens for schools to meaningfully integrate Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). For example, all schools are now required to facilitate learning in three sustainability-oriented interdisciplinary topics; 1. health and life skills; 2. democracy and citizenship; and 3. sustainable development (UDIR, 2020). However, it is arguable that for Norway the challenge still is, as Sandås (2018) discusses has been for some time, to figure out how to; “[…] go beyond successful pilot projects and create the necessary culture of legitimacy, the organisational framework, the competences, and the financial mechanisms to ensure that pupils experienced effective ESD” (Sandås, 2018, p. 89).

A Whole School Approach (WSA) is one model that takes a broad understanding of ESD interconnecting all three of the Norwegian curriculum-renewals interdisciplinary topics. A WSA to ESD also highlights the importance of engaging all school-related stakeholders to stimulate collective learning and meaningful participation (Wals & Mathie, 2022). Despite an increase in interest in WSAs to support educational innovations, such as ESD and Global Citizenship Education, a gap in research concerning how schools can utilise a WSA in practice still exists (Hunt & King, 2015). Moreover, Continuous Professional Development (CPD) of all staff that supports creating a culture of reflexivity, as opposed to a culture of accountability, is central to integrating a WSA (Wals & Mathie, 2022). Thus, understanding better the role of reflexivity in CPD, and exploring how a WSA can support Norway’s curriculum development within a professional development setting is a relevant research focus.

This paper is part of a PhD research study situated within a School-University partnership based in the southeast of Norway. The partnership involves the teacher education department, school district, and four upper-secondary schools. The partnership was established in 2017 to develop a common focus on ESD in practice. An overarching aim for the PhD was established: To create insight into how a Whole School Approach can facilitate the enactment of Norway’s educational innovation in the interdisciplinary topics; ‘health and life skills’; ‘democracy and citizenship’; and ‘sustainable development’. Participatory methods were employed throughout the research and involved collaboration with multi-stakeholders; university lecturers; researchers; school leaders, and the study’s main participants - 11 teachers from the four upper-secondary schools. Through a series of collaborative professional development workshops, meetings, and interviews, taking place between 2021-2022, reflexive CPD methods that utilise a WSA as a thinking tool were co-developed. The research focus and question addressed in this paper are: How can a WSA be utilised as a thinking tool for co-developing reflexive CPD methods to support sustainability-oriented educational innovation? This paper focuses on analysing four of the reflexive activities and methods (based on existing WSA-related models - Sinnes, 2021; Sterling, 2004; and Wals & Mathie, 2022) utilised in the CPD workshops, alongside critically examining the act itself of approaching CPD as a reflexive meeting place for multi-stakeholders to co-develop collaborative professional development methods.

Collated WSA literature and theory (Mathie, 2019; Mathie in press; Wals & Mathie, 2022) form the conceptual framework utilised throughout the design, facilitation and preliminary analysis of the research. Preliminary analysis identified the concepts such as Reflexivity (Hizli Alkan & Priestley, 2019; Archer 2013) and an ecological understanding of Agency (Priestley & Drew, 2019) as central themes. Therefore, what role reflexivity and agency play in the context of developing WSA-related CPD methods is critiqued. This type of collaborative CPD, involving multi-stakeholders, shows promise for fostering supportive partnerships necessary for ESD, while simultaneously developing practical methods to support the integration of sustainability-oriented educational innovation.

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is not only about teaching and learning for sustainable development but also it is about practicing sustainability principles at schools (UNESCO, 2020). It is important to put sustainability at the heart of the school education through organization, teaching and learning activities, school facilities and community engagement (Tilbury & Galvin, 2022). A whole school approach (WSA) to ESD is related to embedding sustainability in all aspects of school life from curriculum, pedagogical approaches, school management to school operations (Henderson & Tilbury, 2004). It also advocates learning outside the school and partnership with the local community (Tilbury & Galvin, 2022). Whole school approach was conceptualized in the academic literature and its core dimensions were determined. Several WSA models from the literature (Shallcross, 2005; Shallcross & Robinson, 2008; Wals & Mathie, 2022) guided to designing this study’s questions and analytical framework. For instance, in a recent WSA model Wals and Mathie (2022) described 6 core dimensions which are 1) instituonal practices, 2) capacity building, 3) pedagogy & learning, 4) community connections and 5) vision & ethos. The authors put vision, ethos and leadership in the center of the model. All dimensions of WSA model have numerous characteristics and interconnections and each dimension is essential for creating a sustainable school model. In this study, we have examined six aspects of WSA framework in order to explore schools’ ESD practices. These aspects are: school vision, teaching and learning, student engagement, community partnership, school leadership and institutional practices. While exploring teaching and learning aspect of WSA to ESD, we focused on three didactical questions (what, how and why) coming from the previous literature (Sund & Gericke, 2020).

Today, green school programs share a desire to transform education through WSA framework for being a model of sustainability (Gough, 2020). Green schools such as eco-schools can play an important role for increasing students’ willingness to take positive actions for sustainability (Scholz, 2011; Dzerefos, 2020). In this study, we examined one green school from Sweden and one green school from Turkey through WSA lens. Schools in Sweden actively participate in different green school programs like green flag eco-school and National Sustainable school award for a long time (Gericke, Manni & Stagell, 2020). In Turkish context, schools have engaged in eco-schools program since 1995 and recently, National Ministry of Education declared that they will make some regulations for integrating sustainable development goals in the whole school programs (MoNE, 2022). In the literature, there are several studies about the student-level impacts of these schools (eg., Olsson et al., 2016; Özsoy, Ertepınar & Sağlam, 2012). However, there is a need to examine how these schools embrace all aspects of WSA framework. In the policy level, after Green Deal was adopted by EU, the role of education towards a green transition was emphasized (Tilbury & Galvin, 2022). European Commission (2022) recommended to adopt WSA framework in education institutions and this new policy brought more opportunities for international cooperation in terms of advocating WSA (Tilbury & Galvin, 2022). Through an international collaboration, this study provides a comprehensive perspective by examining different dimensions of WSA and identifying key drivers and barriers in implementing WSA to ESD in two green schools. Regardless of the previous literature, we aimed to explore two green schools’ ESD approach and implementations in two country contexts. Research questions of this study are:

• How key aspects of whole school approach to ESD appear at two green schools in Sweden and Turkey?
• What are the key drivers and barriers of influencing the use of whole school approach to ESD at two green schools in Sweden and Turkey?

This paper will contribute to the knowledge gap in research concerning the transformation of teaching towards education for sustainable development (ESD), by investigating the process of developing a whole school approach to ESD in two Swedish schools. The practices of ESD have been extensively described in theory. However, the transformation into concrete teaching and learning is an undeniable challenge (Kang, 2019; Sund, 2015), in particular when the aim is to develop students’ competences for taking sustainability action (Olsson, et al., 2022).

A whole school approach to ESD is described as a way to integrate sustainability among all actors at different levels of the school organization, from leaders to teachers and students (Gericke, 2022; Wals & Mathies, 2022). Teacher professional development programs designed to support the development of a whole school approach to ESD has been shown to influence the teachers’ self-efficacy towards sustainability teaching and to support teachers to integrate ESD into their educational practice. However, we also know from research that it may take a long time before a whole school approach to ESD can be seen as fully introduced (Forssten Seiser et al., 2022) and hence, for students to experience all the components of ESD in the teaching at their school (Olsson et al., 2022). The school culture and external factors outside the schools’ mandate may also give different preconditions to successfully integrate ESD into the teaching practice (Gericke & Torbjörnsson, 2022). These different external preconditions might have great implications on how to implement ESD, which is the focus of this study to investigate what success factors and obstacles that can be identified when teachers introduce ESD into their teaching practice.

A way to explain schools’ ESD teaching culture can be to explore the selective teaching traditions in terms of fact-based, normative and pluralistic sustainability teaching (Sund, 2016). While the fact-based and normative tradition has been described as problematic for developing young people’s competences to deal with sustainability issues, the pluralistic tradition has on the other hand been described as an approach with the capacity to empower students with competences to deal with sustainability issues (Olsson et al., 2022). Pluralistic teaching could be seen as the democratic collective and participatory approach where students are involved in discussions and where different views and values are acknowledged in relation to the sustainability issue at hand (Öhman & Östman, 2019). In addition to pluralism, there are two additional and important components that compose ESD teaching and learning (Sinakou et al., 2019). The first additional component is holism, which emphasizes the importance of including environmental, economic, and social perspectives and to include both time (from past to future) and space (local to global) perspectives to the sustainability issues (Berglund & Gericke, 2022). Finally, the action orientation component includes the possibility for students to to train and develop action taking through inclusion of authentic sustainability issues in teaching and learning (Sinakou et al., 2029).

Given the difficulties for teachers to transform teaching practice towards ESD, and that ESD initiatives may not be fully tailored to the diversity of school contexts, this study focuses on how ESD practice and the teachers’ view of ESD develops in two schools with different preconditions for implementing a whole school approach to ESD. The investigation is guided by the following objective:

How do teachers’ views of ESD teaching evolve over time as they participate in a professional development program on a whole school approach to ESD and what success factors and obstacles could be identified as the teachers introduce ESD to their teaching practice?

Society is currently facing and experiencing a fundamental environmental and social climate-related crisis (IPCC, 2022). Despite this, many groups in society are opposed to or are skeptical about various sustainability reforms and research about the climate crisis and other environmental issues (e.g., Jylhä et al. 2022; Krange, Kaltenborn, & Hultman, 2019; Ojala, 2015). When teaching young people about sustainable development, we cannot assume that everyone is in favour of sustainable development; there is a diversity of views on these issues. Previous research demonstrates the importance of emotions for engagement and sustainability commitment, but also for denial and/or scepticism (Håkansson & Östman, 2019; Ojala, 2015; Öhman & Sund, 2021). Other research suggests that viewing denial as exhibiting both negative and positive mechanisms related to the reduction of risk of becoming emotionally paralysed when facing uncomfortable facts, holds great potential to entering a new understanding of denial (Lysgaard, 2019). This study aims to clarify the underlying logic of how and why some young people express resistance and how habits, values and identity contribute to negative emotions and doubts about sustainable development, climate change and the current environmental crisis.

The analysed data originates from a Swedish internet forum which provide a public space for young people (aged 13 to 25) to discuss political matters. Forums of this kind are particularly valuable to study as young people can here openly discuss their views of sustainability topics (Andersson & Öhman, 2016). There are a number of studies that show the prevalence of youth resistance and that also point to sociological and psychological background factors (e.g., Skogen, 1999; Strandbu & Skogen, 2000; Ojala, 2015). There is however a lack of studies that develop an understanding of the character specifically of resistance to and tensions in sustainability topics among young people. That is, how this resistance is played out in discursive practice and the ideological tensions, arguments and the logic behind obstructive standpoints and manifestations. We propose here an understanding based on Pierre Bourdieu's (1986, 1994/2014) theory of capital, with the addition of symbolic environmental capital (Karol & Gale, 2004). Young people's resistance is relevant to education, we need to better understand resistance in order to deal with resistance and tensions constructively and then recommend didactic methods to cope with the tensions.

Young people are worried about climate change. This anxiety is a rational response to the threats and realities of the current climate crisis, a crisis which young people have inherited and have little power to avert (Pihkala, 2021). If “all education is an introduction in some way to the future” (França, 2019, n.p.), it is surely an institutional failure that so few educational jurisdictions include more than cursory nods to climate change in their primary and secondary curricula (McKenzie, 2021). Despite this lag in policy, however, students are learning about and responding to climate change (Gasparri et al., 2021). In particular, young people’s concern about climate change is clearly visible on the social media platform TikTok (Basch et al., 2022). This youth-focused project is interested in youth experiences and intentions regarding TikTok as a form of critical public pedagogy on climate change. As such, this project asks: What can we learn, as educators, policy makers, and fellow humans, about and from the youth-led, climate-change-focused communication happening on TikTok?

TikTok is a relatively new platform on which users produce and share short video content. Once posted, users—predominantly young people—interact with this content by creating new, often mimetic responses, which interact with TikTok’s algorithm and result in a form of “platform politics,” i.e., “the assemblage of design, policies, and norms,” (Massanari, 2017, p. 336) that continuously influence discourse on the platform. Public pedagogy refers to the teaching and learning that happens in public, outside of formal educational institutions (O’Malley et al., 2020). However, TikTok disrupts the “false binary between public-private places of learning” (Truman, 2021, p. 66) by algorithmically feeding users public-personal-corporate-political curricula (and prompting users to generate their own), available wherever data signals can reach, be it in the classroom or kitchen. TikTok is a place where youth express their feelings of grief, anger, and urgency about climate change and also a place to find hope and solidarity, as well as engage in forms of climate activism (de Moor et al., 2021). McKenzie (2022) observes that while TikTok’s algorithmic controls function as “digital governance over the affective lives of people across the globe” (p. 155) at the same time, such virtual encounters “can also be seen as contributing to forms of collective affect and action that, in some cases, extend beyond the algorithmic ambitions of such platforms.” (p. 155). Because of TikTok’s distinctive platform politics and young user base, researchers (e.g., Hautea et al., 2021) have begun to study TikTok and its content as representative of and instrumental in the (re)production of what Papacharissi (2015) calls “affective publics,” i.e., “networked publics that are mobilized and connected, identified, and potentially disconnected through expressions of sentiment, including in relation to climate change” (p. 311). This presentation will review the existing literature on TikTok and other social media platforms as sites of intended climate communication and education, proposing further questions as to the influence this communication might have as public pedagogy towards liveable climate futures.

Internationally, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is given high priority in order to address social, ecological, and economic challenges. The importance of ESD for the future sustainable orientation of our society is underpinned in particular by Agenda 2030 (UN 2015). Alongside these developments, digitality is advancing in many areas of life, such as higher education. Both educational concepts (ESD and digital education) have common goals, as they refer to current and future challenges and cannot be clearly assigned to one discipline. Also, both concepts are about fostering the critical awareness of learners through critical reflective thinking and participatory experience in interdisciplinary contexts (Weselek et al. 2022). In this regard, according to Pegalajar-Palomino et al. (2019), higher education is the key to supporting important developments for both concepts. Future-oriented teacher education should combine both concepts by enabling future teachers to jointly shape sustainable development processes, for example with the help of serious games. These are games that do not serve the purpose of entertainment (van der Molen et al 2017), but pursue an educational goal (Wouters et al. 2013). Thus, escape rooms can be referred to as serious games if they pursue a specific educational goal. In this context, Fotaris and Mastoras describe the specificities of escape rooms from an educational perspective. From their point of view, escape rooms are based on a social constructivist approach, as learners construct their own knowledge when they encounter and deal with various challenges in an escape room in real time. In this process, learners face complex problems, which can only be solved through interaction with others (Fotaris & Mastoras 2019). Referring to serious games and their potential for supporting ESD goals, Spangenberger et al. (2022) report that such games have already been discussed intensively in the international literature. They explain that, from an empirical point of view, various studies have shown that serious games are more effective for learning than traditional learning methods. This is demonstrated by the meta-analysis of Wouters et al. (2013) and other studies evaluating the use of serious games in higher education (e.g., Braghirolli et al. 2016). Since university teacher education aims at teaching key competencies for the later (self-)responsible, reflective, and professional actions of teachers in school, it is of central importance that teachers promote important key competencies for ESD. Thus, important competencies for ESD have already been identified. These competencies, which are important for learners to help shape sustainable development processes, include competencies for collaboration, critical thinking, and integrated problem-solving skills (e.g., Rieckmann 2018). Against this background, it is of central importance that concrete learning objectives are formulated for the field of ESD in university teacher education as a basis for the development and implementation of appropriate didactic methods and tools. It is in this context that the project BNERoom aims to contribute to a stronger implementation of ESD and digital education in teacher training. The overall goal of the project is to develop a digital escape room (BNERoom) on ESD for student teachers, to test it with students, and to evaluate it scientifically. The project initiates an interdisciplinary exchange between students of all teaching professions in educational science and didactics (catholic theology and social education) and scientifically accompanies the negotiation processes among students.

There is increasing attention to the role of education in teaching environmental issues such as climate change (Teach the Future, n.d.). Whilst environmental issues are science-dependent, science is not sufficient to respond to today’s environmental challenges. Yet internationally, science and geography are those subjects most likely to include environmental content (UNESCO, 2021). In England, students can expect to learn about environmental challenges including climate change, biodiversity and pollution during their compulsory science education (DfE, 2013). These topics are often controversial, rife with moral tensions (Zeidler, Herman, & Sadler, 2019), and characterised by both descriptive facts and normative values. The values often deal with solutions to the problems, what kind of actions can be taken on an individual or societal level and even what kind of society is preferred. This makes the issues both scientific and political. Yet little is known about how politics enters the science classroom. In this study, we aim to understand how environmental politics enters the classroom, and how science teachers address different approaches to political participation with their students.

In order to develop democratic environmental governance, there is a need for representation of different groups of people, opportunities for participation and for spaces for deliberation (Lidskog & Elander, 2007), i.e. for politics. Schools are potential sites for participation and deliberation and for learning democracy (Biesta & Lawy, 2006). Politics can be defined in different ways, from a narrow focus on electoral processes to broader conceptualisations which include different ways of making decisions and shaping power relations. In this study, we are concerned with power and social change (Dahl & Stinebrickner, 2003) i.e. “the capacity for agency and deliberation in situations of genuine collective or social choice” (Hay, 2007, p. 77) through science education. This definition of politics goes beyond electoral and party politics and includes activities outside formal political institutions. This is in accordance with Heywood (1999)’s characterisation of politics as an a social activity that arises out of interaction between or among people, which develops out of diversity (the existence of different interests, wants, needs and goals), and which relates to collective decisions which are regarded as binding upon a group of people. Carter (2018) identifies the environment as a policy problem for several reasons, including that the environment can be considered a public good, with complex and interdependent relationships between people and ecosystems acting across national borders with consequences felt into the future.

This characterisation of politics is relevant to the study context as education is a social activity which brings together people with different views, interests and goals in relation to the environment, and it is a context in which collective decisions can be made, for example, about how the school function, what is taught (and how), and what actions or outcomes are desirable as a result of education. Not all of these actions and outcomes can be considered political and we see politics as related to societal engagement and political participation more broadly. Ekman and Amnå (2012) have developed a typology of different forms of participation in society. They distinguish between (a) non-participation (disengagement); (b) civic participation (latent political), whether social involvement or civic engagement; and (c) political participation (manifest political), which can be formal political participation or activism. Each of these three types of participation are further classified in terms of individual and collective forms. In this study, we use Ekman and Amnå’s (2012) typology to understand the ways in which teachers address the political dimensions of the environment in school science. The research question we set out to explore in the study is: how do science teachers address political participation in science education?

In this scholarly review we critically discuss the last 30 years of research on pluralism in environmental and sustainability education (ESE). Pluralism has been a focal point for a vast amount of theoretical and empirical studies in the research field. In this review we analyse the state-of-the-art of pluralism in relation to current societal changes and challenges. By placing three decades of research on pluralism in relation to key challenges that face democratic society and education, we outline prospects for future research and discuss what role pluralism can, and should, take in ESE research.

While pluralism has been addressed in ESE research for thirty years, we have witnessed three major changes that challenge pluralism as an educational approach. First, we have seen fierce polarization of public debate and the rise of post-truth politics that fuels political disagreements over descriptive questions, such as “is the climate changing due to human activity?” (cf. Aasen, 2017; McCright & Dunlap, 2011). Second, there has been an increased instrumentalization of education that has brought forth a culture of accountability and a focus on educational achievement in terms of measurable outcomes that can be compared and competing on an international scale (Rizvi & Lingard, 2009; Lawn, 2011). Third, the environmental situation and the ongoing climate change on this planet has come with an accentuated urgency for action, to put it mildly. The current societal, educational, and environmental situation puts pressure on pluralism as an educational approach to such an extent that one could wonder whether now is the right time for an educational approach that frames teaching and learning as an open-ended endeavour of growth and freedom. The aim of this paper is therefore to critically reflect on the development of pluralism in ESE research.

Pluralistic ideals in ESE took shape out of the normativity-debate in the 1990’s (Jickling, 1994; Lijmbach et al., 2002) and how they developed through theoretical discussions of relativism (Öhman, 2006; Öhman & Östman, 2007; Van Poeck, 2019). Rather than being an external critique against pluralism, the problem of relativism is theoretically used to further develop and improve pluralism as an educational approach in ESE. During the last decade, new theoretical perspectives have become a part of the theoretical development of pluralism in ESE. These are post-humanism/more-than-human perspectives (Kopnina & Cherniak, 2016; Lindgren & Öhman, 2019), decolonial perspectives (Sund & Pashby, 2020), and political theory such as deliberation and agonism (Lundegård & Wickman, 2012; Tryggvason & Öhman, 2019). The perspectives are new in the sense that they are new to the development and discussion of the pluralistic approach in ESE, even if the theories have a longer history within other fields of social science. The critique that is formulated from these theoretical strands is immanent in the sense that it is not a critique of the pluralistic approach per se, but a critique of the presuppositions, the epistemologies, and the implicit values that follow from pluralistic approach as it is formulated in ESE research.

For our review, we have scrutinized three decades of research literature, and critically engaged with these writings in the light of present societal challenges and what these may imply in terms of requirements for future research. The following questions guided our scholarly review: “How has pluralism developed theoretically during the last 30 years?”, “What empirical findings about pluralism have been important during the last 30 years?”, and “Does pluralistic ESE need to be revisited in the light of current societal, educational, and ecological evolutions?”.

This symposium focuses on how different concepts of ‘quality’ in teaching and education can be identified, understood and further developed in ESE theory and practice. Throughout the development of ESE research and practice there have been a steady influx of different implicit and explicit approaches to quality as a way of understanding the core of education and teachinng (Poeck & Lysgaard, 2016; Poeck, Öhman, & Östman, 2019). From emphasis on facts, knowledge and behavior to critiques drawing on a Bildung-infused focus on critical thinking and democratic participation, ESE theory and practice continue to be highly contextualized in relation to local and national educational structures. The ongoing mainstreaming tendencies within the field highlights the importance of developing a more nuanced language of how notions of quality are present and can be developed in order to strengthen research and practice. Through the symposium, we will approach quality in ESE education and teaching as a multidimensional concept (Elf, 2021). We will explore how different concepts of quality are present in the ESE field and how we can understand them as expressions of 1) logical, 2) psychological, 3) moral and ) aesthetic dimensions of quality. The symposium is drawing on insights from pragmatism (Dewey, 1916) that emphasizes the experiential and communicative nature of quality in education and teaching: Quality is experienced and appraised in specific communicative settings (e.g. problem-based teaching) by someone (e.g. student, teacher) about something (e.g. subject matter) in order to be the quality that it is. Quality is thus not considered to be existing objectively, in itself (Wittek & Kvernbekk, 2011). Further, quality eludes satisfactory measurement by singular quantitative or qualitative processes (Berliner, 2005; Dahler-Larsen, 2019). Thus the symposium explores experiential conceptions of quality inferred interpretatively from qualitative and quantitative data (Stake, 1995).

As an effort to open up conceptualizations of quality in ESE, the symposium will engage with an interest in the role of 1) intended, 2) documented and 3) experienced aspects of quality in ESE education and teaching. Furthermore, we aim at conceptualizing and analysing crossdisciplinary as well as monodisciplinary/subject-specific ESE qualities (Kumar, 2010). An ambition of the symposium is to explore how the intended and documented aspects of quality has been the main focus of large parts of the ESE research field and that further focus on exploring experienced aspects of quality in ESE education and practice has great potential for the further development of the field.

Quality in education is a fiercely debated concept. Definitions and emphasis vary according to educational disciplines, geographical and cultural positions, policy and practice settings, understandings of didactical, pedagogical, and teaching trajectories within education (Charalambous & Praetorius, 2020; Elf, 2021; Fenstermacher & Richardson, 2005; Kumar, 2010). In Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) research these discussions have been present throughout the development of the research field, not necessarily as a specific sub-strand, but as an ongoing dialogue between different positions within and outside of the field. Combining our interest for discovering qualities within the ESE-field, our aim is to present a knowledge synthesis to qualify and strengthen our ability to navigate in an evolving research field (Gutierrez-Bucheli, Reid, & Kidman, 2022). The many initiatives focusing on quality enhancement, searching for “solutions” with the aim of “fixing” both the education system, and now preferably also sustainability issues within the same breath, call for nuanced discussions of how quality- and the ESE-disciplines can be combined (Biesta, 2021). This paper aims to deliver insights, presenting a selection of the most dominant trends and developments. Inspired by a multidimensional perspective on quality, our aim is to explore the nuances of how quality is displayed in relation to the ESE-research field. Furthermore, we are interested in how we can ensure that these dimensions are including quality from a student perspective? As Rickinson (2001), earlier Payne (1997), pointed out that the pupil and student, although they are the center and the subjects of ESE, they are nonetheless often overlooked in theory and research. As part of continuing this dialogue we focus on nuancing the different aspects and dimensions of quality in relation to the ESE-field. Thus the ambition, is more than descriptive, with a special interest in the voice of the pupils and the students when arguing for specific perspectives on quality within ESE education. Through inspiration from ongoing debates on the prescribed, documented and experienced quality aspects of not only education, but also more specifically teaching, we aim to deliver a broad analysis of concepts of quality in ESE research and potentials for further strengthening the specific voice of students and pupils through conceptual and methodological development within ESE research in order to support the continued critical and constructive immigration of environmental and sustainability issues into the broader educational landscape.

Biesta, G. (2021). World-Centred Education: A View for the Present. Milton: Taylor & Francis Group. Charalambous, C. Y., & Praetorius, A.-K. (2020). Creating a forum for researching teaching and its quality more synergistically. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 67, 100894. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2020.100894 Elf, N. (2021). The Surplus of Quality: How to Study Quality in Teaching in Three QUINT Projects. In M. Blikstad-Balas, K. Klette, & M. Tengberg (Eds.), Ways of Analyzing Teaching Quality (pp. 53-88). Fenstermacher, G., & Richardson, V. (2005). On Making Determinations of Quality in Teaching. The Teachers College Record, 107, 186–213. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9620.2005.00462.x Gutierrez-Bucheli, L., Reid, A., & Kidman, G. (2022). Scoping reviews: Their development and application in environmental and sustainability education research. Environmental Education Research, 28(5), 645-673. doi:10.1080/13504622.2022.2047896 Kumar, K. (2010). Quality in Education:Competing Concepts. 7(1), 7-18. doi:10.1177/0973184913411197 Payne, P. (1997). Embodiment and Environmental Education. Environmental Education Research, 3(2), 133-153. doi:10.1080/1350462970030203 Rickinson, M. (2001). Learners and Learning in Environmental Education: A critical review of the evidence. Environmental Education Research, 7(3), 207-320. doi:10.1080/13504620120065230

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is often pigeon-holed as a concern for the natural science and, to some extent, the social science subjects (Læssøe 2020). Given the practical circumstances and the history of the subject of Danish as a L1/Language arts subject, it is no surprise that teachers hesitate to integrate environmental and sustainability issues in their L1-teaching (Epinion 2021). The L1-focus on literacy and literature may seem remote from or even irrelevant to natural science knowledge on ecosystems, biodiversity etc. (UNESCO 2015). However, our working hypothesis is that the L1-subject by virtues of its roots in arts and humanities (Dewey 1934, Rosenblatt 1994; Myren-Svelstad, 2020, Lysgaard, Bengtsson & Laugesen 2019) has potential for learning practices which bring affective, social and ethical dimensions of ESD-issues to the foreground thereby making a different and important contribution to ESD alongside subjects from the natural and social sciences. Exploring this hypothesis empirically, qualitative ethnographic fieldwork has been carried out in three strategically selected case schools currently adapting UN’s 17 sustainable development goals (so-called 2030 Schools) with the ambition of documenting the ‘doings, saying and relatings’ (Kemmis et al., 2014) of the classroom. In our presentation, we will present theoretical and methodological considerations as well as preliminary findings from the first phases of fieldwork. Findings suggest that there is an ESD-learning potential in aesthetic teaching activities initiated through inquiry-oriented literature teaching practices that enable existential perspectives and student voices on humans’ sustainable relation to each other and the otherness of nature. However, findings also demonstrate how some L1 teachers tend to relapse to traditional teaching formats, for example when forced by local school leadership to take UN’s SDG goals as a point of departure, which leads to student resistance expressed through irony and parody. One implication is that ESD issues need to be ‘translated’/didactizised in subtle ways that resonate with the rationale of the subject vis-a-vis students’ identities.

Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New York: Minton, Balch & Company. Epinion (2021). Undervisning i bæredygtighed på grundskoleområdet [Education for sustainable development in primary and lower-secondary education]. Retrieved form: www.epinionglobal.com Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2014). Changing practices, changing education. Springer. Lysgaard, J. A., Bengtsson, S. & Laugesen, M. H.-L. (2019). Dark Pedagogy: Education, Horror & the Anthropocene. Palgrave Læssøe, J. (2020). Bæredygtighedsbegrebet og uddannelse [The concept of sustainability and education]. In: Lysgaard, J. A. & Jørgensen, N. J. (Eds.). Bæredygtighedens pædagogik: Forskningsbaserede bidrag. Frydenlund Myren-Svelstad, P.E. (2020). “Sustainable Literary Competence: Connecting Literature Education to Education for Sustainability”. In Humanities 2020, 9(4), 141; https://doi.org/10.3390/h9040141 Rosenblatt, L. (1994). The Reader, the Text, the Poem. The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. UNESCO (2015). Not Just Hot Air: Putting Climate Change Education into Practice. UNESCO

Hope has moved to the center of the discussion about sustainable education (Ratinen & Uusiautti, 2020; Straume, 2020). The importance of emotions and knowledge in ESD has been discussed for some years (Manni et al., 2017). While there are approaches that juxtapose emotions to scientific knowledge (Tsevreni, 2011), in this paper we investigate the role and interplay of emotions and knowledge in relation to decision making in green transition issues. The three dimensions, emotion, cognition and enactment, are also important for measuring sustainable consciousness (Gericke et al., 2019). Our research question is: Which role plays different degrees of pathos when presenting green transition dilemma for students’ emotional reaction relative to their dilemma specific knowledge base and decision-making? The paper presents results from an experimental vignettes survey (Atzmüller & Steiner, 2010), where 1380 Danish students in grade 6 to 9 have been exposed to and questioned about four dilemmatic narratives of green transition based on texts and pictures. The dilemmas are inspired from qualitative empirical data and fictionalized, and take up issues of diversity, waste/recycling, and climate crisis from different disciplines. The students were assigned randomly to three different versions (splits) of the same dilemma varying the pathos of the narratives. Emotional reactions are measured by a two-dimensional scale (pleasant-unpleasant; activation-deactivation) inspired by Russel’s affectiv circumplex (Yik et al., 2011). Inspired by Waltner and colleagues (Waltner et al., 2019) we developed a knowledge scale to each dilemma consisting of five multiple choice questions. Finally, the students were forced to make a decision on the dilemma at hand. Beside personal variables, we collected self-reported background variable like socio-economic background, knowledge about Fridays for Future and a validated Nature Connectedness Index (Richardson et al., 2019). Preliminary results seem to confirm the adolescence dip in nature connectedness and engagement. We expect substantial variation in students’ emotional reactions in relation to knowledge level and decision-making related to the dilemma. In addition, methodological issues related to the design of dilemmas and the applied scales will be discussed.

Atzmüller, C., & Steiner, P. M. (2010). Experimental Vignette Studies in Survey Research. Methodology, 6(3), 128-138. Gericke, N., Boeve-de Pauw, J., Berglund, T., & Olsson, D. (2019). The Sustainability Consciousness Questionnaire. Sustainable Development, 27(1), 35-49. Manni, A., Sporre, K., & Ottander, C. (2017). Emotions and values – a case study of meaning-making in ESE. Environmental Education Research, 23(4), 451-464. Ratinen, I., & Uusiautti, S. (2020). Finnish Students’ Knowledge of Climate Change Mitigation and Its Connection to Hope. Sustainability, 12(6), 2181. Richardson, M., Hunt, A., Hinds, . . . White, M. (2019). A Measure of Nature Connectedness for Children and Adults: Validation, Performance, and Insights. Sustainability, 11(12), 3250. Straume, I. S. (2020). What may we hope for? Education in times of climate change. Constellations, 27(3), 540-552. Tsevreni, I. (2011). Towards an environmental education without scientific knowledge. Environmental Education Research, 17, 53-67. Waltner, E.-M., Rieß, W., & Mischo, C. (2019). Development and Validation of an Instrument for Measuring Student Sustainability Competencies. Sustainability, 11(6), 1717. Yik, M., Russell, J. A., & Steiger, J. H. (2011). A 12-Point Circumplex Structure of Core Affect. Emotion, 11(4), 705-731.

What’s worth teaching in environmental and sustainability education (ESE)? There are many different competencies that can be addressed (Vare et al., 2022). One of the common themes in ESE is pollution and waste. I argue that students should not only understand the magnitude of environmental problems but also possible solutions to these problems and their own action competence to deal with them (Collins, 2017: 74; Sass et al., 2020). I will discuss how to qualify the teaching and learning of rubbish as just one example of doing ESE in the Danish primary and secondary school. The main research question is: What are the possibilities and limitations of a pedagogy of rubbish? In a Danish context there has been an earlier attempt to develop a pedagogy of rubbish formulated by Jørgensen et al. (2018). My aim of this paper is to unfold some of the theoretical ideas by discussing how Thompsons (1979) theory of rubbish, and the expansion of it by Engeström & Blackler (2005), can be applied to a pedagogy of rubbish. I will also discuss how the practices of reduction, reuse and recycling of rubbish can become part of the everyday life of Danish schools using examples from an ongoing empirical study about the quality dimensions of ESE. An argument is to view a pedagogy of rubbish in a broader perspective of a pedagogy of things (Nohl, 2011) and students’ valuation of things in their performativity (Nohl & Wulf, 2013).

Collins, A. (2017). What's Worth Teaching? Rethinking Curriculum in the Age of Technology. New York: Teachers College Press. Engeström, Y. & Blackler, F. (2005). On the Life of the Object. Organization, 12, 3, 307-330. Jørgensen, N.J., Madsen, K.D. & Læssøe, J. (2018). Waste in education: the potential of materiality and practice. Environmental Education Research, 24, 6, 807-817. Nohl, A. (2011). Pädagogik der Dinge. Verlag Julius Klinkhardt. Nohl, A. & Wulf, C. (2013). Die Materialität pädagogischer Prozesse zwischen Mensch und Ding. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 16, 1-13. Sass, W., Pauw, J.B., Olsson, D., Gericke, N., Maeyer, S.D. & Petegem, P.V. (2020). Redefining action competence: The case of sustainable development. The Journal of Environmental Education, 51, 4, 292-305. Thompson, M. (1979). Rubbish theory: The creation and destruction of value. Oxford University Press. Vare, P., Lausselet, N. & Rieckmann, M. (Eds.) (2022). Competences in Education for Sustainable Development: Critical Perspectives. Springer.

Recent research within the field of environmental sustainability research has highlighted the need to re-engage with education philosophy and the ontological assumptions informing these philosophies in the context of what is labeled the Anthropocene (e.g. Sjögren & Hofverberg 2022, Clark & McPhie 2020a). A common concern is the anthropocentrism of common education thought, where alternative entry points are drawn up often appealing to (neo)materialism (Payne 2016, Clark & McPhie 2020b) and posthumanism (Malone & Young 2022, Weaver & Snaza 2017) to expand notions of subjectivity and agency in education.

Drawing on the loose classification of speculative realism, as it was coined by the seminal workshop with the same title, at Goldsmith the University of London in 2007, this symposium aims to differentiate a return to realism as a partially overlapping but also distinct entry point for rethinking education and instruction in the Anthropocene. What this symposium aims to focus upon is the critique and abandonment of correlationism (Meillassoux, 2009) in education thought, that is that when we think about education that we always already have to assume a mutual correlation of thought/practice/experience/discursivity and world. The symposium engages with realism, as an invitation to break this correlation and the reduction of the world to processes of human learning and formation (Bildung), without claiming access to this world as in classical or ‘naive’ realism or again reducing the world to its correlation to thought/practice/experience/discursivity. Accordingly, the symposium is to offer a venue for speculative education thought that is to engage with questions such as: How to re-think education and instruction once we break with correlationism?

The symposium is to open up a space that is often forbidden or withheld in the engagement with education as science, that is a return to the underlying ontological questions and positions of thinking education and its associated ambitions and limits. This space is opened to exactly not reduce education science to epistemology (i.e. what we can know about education and its processes/outcomes) but to return to ontology as means to speculate and engage with that what remains beyond or withdrawn in education. This return to ontology and speculative realism is to open up alternate entry points for engaging with anthropocentrism and education in the Anthropocene, raising speculative questions and answers to how to think and engage with education beyond the confines of correlationism.

The papers incorporated into the symposium are written by scholars in the field of environmental education and the philosophy of education who, in their previous, work have been engaging with speculative realism. It is a joint symposium of the environmental and sustainability and the philosophy of education networks (30 & 13) of EERA and aims to initiate a dialogue among these fields as well as representatives from philosophy. Discussant Dist. Prof. Graham Harman from the Southern California Institute of Architecture is one of the original presenters at the Goldsmith workshop on speculative realism and provides a critical reflection on how philosophy and educational sciences might nuance an engagement with the challenges the Anthropocene can be seen to impose.

Drawing on the educational experimental mega site “Naturkraft” situated at the Danish west coast (Kardyb, 2023), we engage with the questions of how 1) education in the Anthropocene faces ongoing challenges from the emphasis on anthropocentric conceptualizations of the world, and 2) how education is always enmeshed within different realities that are constantly de-centered, eccentric, destabilized, out of sync with anthropocentric aspirations of control. Drawing on Timothy Morton tri-partite notion of the world-for-us, the-world-in-itself and the world-without-us- (Morton, 2013, 2016), we open up for perspectives on how these three worlds co-exist, overlap, and struggle in Naturkraft, and potentially in any given educational setting. Adhering to anthropocentric logic within education quickly reaches its limits as we face global, regional, and local challenges in a time of hyper-object-derived wicked problems (Lysgaard, Bengtsson, & Laugesen, 2019). A way of navigating these problems is to indulge in visions of shedding existing educational thought and practice in order to transcend correlationistic foundations of education (Clarke & McPhie, 2020; Paulsen, 2021). We argue that such transcendence is never out of reach, and on an ontological level requires more emphasis on rigor of thought and less on the journey to pinpoint an authentic outside that can rip us out of our correlationistic slumber (Lysgaard & Bengtsson, 2020). Through analysis of the manmade ‘nature’ in and of the Naturkraft site, we argue for the omnipresence of the world-without-us and the potential of engaging with this darker side of the specific and general educational site (Bengtsson, 2018; Kardyb, 2023). Being attuned to and engaging with aspects of education that breaking with correlationism is no mean feat though. Such an effort shares characteristics with efforts to engage the like of the Lacanian Real, Philip Pulman’s Dust, or Lovecraftian cosmic Horror (Bird, 2001; Harman, 2012; Lysgaard, 2018). There is no chance to look directly at it without being stunned, our gaze diverted, or the thing that we want to see withdrawing from us. At the same time there is no escaping the world-without-us as our petty plans and hopes for the past, present and future are easily dashed aside by forces outside of our time, space and senses. Naturkraft offers examples of how education and educational practice benefit and suffer from the encounters with the world-without-us and how these encounters instill a notion of realism that challenges the ongoing emphasis on correlationistic foundational values of education.

Bengtsson, S. L. (2018). Outlining an Education Without Nature and Object-Oriented Learning. In K. M. Amy Cutter-Mackenzie, and E. Hacking, Barratt (Ed.), Research Handbook on Childhoodnature: Springer. Bird, A.-M. (2001). “Without Contraries is no Progression”: Dust as an All-Inclusive, Multifunctional Metaphor in Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials”. Children’s Literature in Education, 32(2), 111-123. Clarke, D. A. G., & McPhie, J. (2020). Tensions, knots, and lines of flight: themes and directions of travel for new materialisms and environmental education. Environmental Education Research, 26(9-10), 1231-1254. Harman, G. (2012). Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy: ZERO books. Kardyb, D. F. S. (2023). PhD.-thesis. (PhD), Aarhus University, Copenhagen. Lysgaard, J. A. (2018). Learning from Bad Practice in Environmental and Sustainability Education: Peter Lang. Lysgaard, J. A., & Bengtsson, S. (2020). Dark pedagogy – speculative realism and environmental and sustainability education. Environmental Education Research, 26(9-10), 1453-1465. Lysgaard, J. A., Bengtsson, S., & Laugesen, M. H.-L. (2019). Dark Pedagogy. New York: Palgrave. Morton, T. (2013). Hyperobjects: University of Minnesota Press. Morton, T. (2016). Dark Ecology: Colombia University Press. Paulsen, M. (2021). Bildung & Technology: Historical and Systematic Relationships. In D. Kergel, M. Paulsen, & J. Garsdal (Eds.), Bildung in the Digital Age: Routledge.

If there is one educational question that the Anthropocene should evoke, it has to concern the mechanisms through which reality - that is, human-independent objects like the ecological crisis - come to matter for human subjects. This topic lies at the very heart of the discussions generated by speculative realism. After all, Meillassoux (2010) posited overcoming correlationism as an ontological condition for the possibility of engaging with reality as such. Yet this very condition multiplies the difficulties involved in the educational question. If reality is indeed non-correlative with human experiential apparati, it is not immediately obvious how it can become an object of concern for human beings. We aim to explore this ambiguity in the ontological register. The main issue we wish to investigate is the status of the human psyche as one object among others. On the one hand, this concerns the object we call the human psyche - what is this object like, ontologically speaking? On the other hand, it concerns the relations this object has with other objects - how does this object interact with other objects? We seek an ontology capable of making sense both of the irreducibility of objects to human experiential apparati and the fact that some of these objects matter to us. We stage our investigation as a critical encounter between object-oriented-ontology (OOO), as formulated by Graham Harman (2011), and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory (Lacan 2019). Received wisdom would see these theoretical positions as deeply irreconcilable: Lacan’s theorizing is a paradigm case of correlationism while OOO is one way of overcoming correlationism. However, following recent work by Lucas Pohl (2020), we argue that making the accusation of correlationism stick to Lacan’s theory is not as easy as it might seem. This opens the possibility of a more fruitful encounter between the two positions, which we pursue under Pohl’s Lacanian label “object-disoriented-ontology”. While we cannot hope to resolve the educational question of how objects begin to matter, our analysis does clarify the ontological requirements for answering this question.

Harman, G. (2011). The quadruple object. Zero Books. Lacan, J. (2019). Desire and Its Interpretation: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book VI. Polity. Meillassoux, Q. (2010). After finitude: An essay on the necessity of contingency. Bloomsbury Publishing. Pohl, L. (2020). Object-disoriented geographies: the Ghost Tower of Bangkok and the topology of anxiety. cultural geographies, 27(1), 71-84.

This paper focuses on the status of the content of education and how the content might be rethought by drawing on speculative realist thought. Drawing on our previous work (Bengtsson 2022), where we differentiate between the content of education and the object of education that this content refers to, we aim to provide an object-oriented ontological differentiation between sensible object and real object (Harman 2011) in order to break with the correlationist reduction of the object of education to the content of education as always already incorporated into human practice and historicity. The paper is to outline, against the background of the German Geisteswissenschaftliche Didaktik (curriculum theory based on the epistemological principles of Geisteswissenschaft), how the theory of curriculum and instruction is based on expressions of correlationist thought- We will here specify by relating to Klafki’s (2013, 1959) and Menck’s (1986) influential work what the consequences are for the conception of the content of education (Unterrichtsinhalt) as well as how this conception frames the project of education as a project of self-cultivation and formation (Bildung). By critiquing the consequences of a reduction of the content to a conflation of its position in nature and culture, we illustrate how content only attains a stable educative substance by an appeal to a static notion of nature and how the determinism of a static and universal educative substance is only partially bracketed by the appeal to human exceptionalism and agency in relation to the appropriation of that content in culture (Bildung of humanity) and the project of self-formation (Bildung of the individual self). The correlationist conflation of those two positions of the content leads here to explanatory difficulties with regard to the relation between the Bildung of self and humanity, as well as how the stability and substance of the content in the natural world can be maintained in the context of the Anthropocene. By rehabilitating the notion of the object of education, we aim to explore how objects have a form of agency that shapes self-formation and the formation of humanity. We draw here on the concept of “allure” in Harman´s (2010, 2011) work to illustrate how the object of education exerts a form of causal aesthetic influence on individuals and humanity’s Bildung. This is particularly relevant for ESE and how we - as humans - come to know ourselves in the Anthropocene, which will be further addressed in the paper.

Bengtsson, S. L. (2022). Didaktiken efter idealismen: Undervisningsobjektets återkomst i antropocen. Pedagogisk Forskning i Sverige. Harman, G. (2010). Towards Speculative Realism: Essays and Lectures. Zero Books. Harman, G. (2011). The Quadruple Object. Zero Books. Klafki, W. (1959). Das Pädagogische Problem des Elementaren und die Theorie der kategorialen Bildung. Beltz Verlag. Klafki, W. (2013). Kategoriale Bildung: Konzeptionen und Praxis reformpädagogischer Schularbeit zwischen 1948 und 1952. Verlag Julius Klinkhardt. Menck, P. (1986). Unterrichtsinhalt oder Ein Versuch über die Konstruktion der Wirklichkeit im Unterricht. Peter Lang.

In her genealogy of the word ‘use,’ Sara Ahmed (2019) highlights the potential that is inherent in the term. It is ‘stubby, plain, workmanlike,’ but also radiates sturdy practicality in achieving something worthwhile (p. 5). While recognising the value of ‘blue sky’ or basic research ‘of’ or on education, which advances understanding without the expectation of its usefulness, in the case of environmental and sustainability education (ESE) research, there is typically an applied aim of advancing some aspect of ESE, or in other words of being ‘for’ education. Within this, there are many ways that educational research can ‘be of use,’ including through theory (Fine and Barreras 2001).

Ahmed suggests that the requirement to be useful, while often presented generally, tends to fall upon some more than others, often those considered most ‘useless.’ In the case of research, for example, does the responsibility of ‘useful’ ESE research and practice rest with some more than others, including those most affected by a lack of ESE action—people from countries already hard hit by climate change, or communities who have experienced decades or centuries of environmental and colonial injustice (Rickinson & McKenzie, 2021).

Ahmed (2019) also alerts us to the value of ‘queer uses’, or those that challenge how things are usually approached (p. 75); suggesting the value of research that is atypical, or against the grain of usual ways of doing things. Another point is to beware of use as a technique of power, such as ESE research which keeps us busy, but maintains or even perpetuates the status quo. In doing seemingly ‘useful’ research through different kinds of research partnerships, we also risk becoming part of the structures that support education that is less than it can be for people and planet. And perhaps our research too often works with a limited view of what can or needs to be changed, not questioning enough, the forms or procedures of education (Ball, 2020).

In this symposium, we consider whether and how theory can or should be ‘useful’ in and as ESE research. Theoretical and conceptual work, whether standing alone or in conjunction with empirical data, has been a long standing aspect of ESE research, and research more broadly. It has been advocated as something that can allow us to ‘think without a bannister’ (Arendt, 1975) when used to peel back the layers of assumptions that lock us into particular ways of life harmful to ourselves or others. On the other hand, unconscious theory is always in use, such as in populist theories (the state is corrupt and wants to take away individual freedom), propagandist theory (climate change is a hoax). Theory is in use all the time, shaping how we know and what we do. Surfacing theories in use is typically considered an important part of a critical education, and can be enabled by the mobilisation of alternative theories and ways of thinking and being (McKenzie, 2009).

In addition, the recognition of the implicitness of theory in practice and vice versa, means extending understandings of theories as beyond cognition to also material and lived. Theory not only has an epistemological aspect, but also an ontology, and an axiology. As a result, we can understand theory as socio-materially productive of sense making and action, rather than only as thought (Mannion, 2020).

In this session, researchers will speak to how they are using theory in their ESE research and to what effects - what it enables or forecloses, how it is understood and practised, and with what possible implications for ESE research, policy, and practice.

This paper focuses on science fiction (including climate fiction and speculative fiction) as a theoretical practice for highlighting injustices in the present and imagining different futures. I think alongside science fiction texts with themes of climate change to highlight the affordances of engaging with literary theory and literature as a form of climate education. Considering the material effects of theory, and stories in creating worlds aligns with feminist literary scholars (Wynter & McKittrick, 2015), science and technology scholars (Bahng, 2017) and Indigenous climate fiction scholars (Whyte, 2018) who argue for the power of narrative in shaping experience, critiquing the present, and positing different futures. Through considering different worlds from our own, science fictions provide the opportunity for critical reflection on aspects of how our world currently is and where we might end up if we continue along certain paths Accordingly, this paper will (1) activate science fiction as a theoretical mode to think through real world news; and (2) think with climate fiction texts as a method to critique the world and posit different futures. Data sources will include literary fiction texts, and contemporary news, and discussion of a cross-curricular project with English teachers around Indigenous climate fiction in Australian secondary school. Through exemplifications of climate fiction as both a method of reading, and form of text in English literary education, the paper will demonstrate how English literary education as an important interdisciplinary site for reimaging social and environmental futures in times of ongoing climate and technological crises globally.

Bahng, A. (2017). Plasmodial Improprieties: Octavia E. Butler, Slime Molds, and Imagining a Femi-Queer Commons. In C. Cipolla, K. Gupta, A. Rubin, David, & A. Willey (Eds.). Queer feminist science studies : A reader .(pp. 310–325). University of Washington Press. McKittrick, K. (2015). Sylvia Wynter: On being human as praxis. Duke University Press. Whyte, K. P. (2018). Indigenous science (fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral dystopias and fantasies of climate change crises. Environment & Planning E: Nature & Space, 1 (1/2), 224.

This presentation will conceptualize fiction science and the derived potential for the ESE field (Bengtsson & Lysgaard, 2023). Fiction science can be seen as a form of paying homage to realism in science, where we see the acknowledgement of realism as to open up again the facticity of how things are. Fiction science as a genre we would like to introduce plays with this openness of facticity, as acknowledged in the scientific tradition to scepticism, in order to play with potential futures and pasts that can be seen to be partially informed by generally perceived truth(s) and partially informed by fiction, where do not yet/any longer know if that fiction is turning out to be a “truth”. We consider fiction science to engage with the challenges to human exceptionalism that the Anthropocene can be interpreted to impose on us. This rests on the acknowledgement that an empirically founded experience of the world in the “present” focusing on the human senses and self-conception is out of tune with the strange times we live in (Bengtsson & Lysgaard, 2022). To put it simply, we are increasingly becoming aware that the projected facticity of our understanding of ourselves and the world is lacking in “truthiness”, and that what is and has been is apparently different than we thought (Saari & Mullen, 2020). Fiction science relates, in this sense, to the possibility of things existing in the past, present and future at the same time (Bengtsson & Lysgaard, 2023). Fiction science taps into an openness or the intervention of a past and future that we as humans do not have access to. The fictive or imaginative aspects of fiction science can not be “contained” to a imagined and non-factual future or past but rather have a Schrödinger's cat state where the future is open and the fictive aspect of its prediction can turn out to be a seemingly “fact” in the future (cf. Harman, 2012). In our presentation we will engage with the question of what fiction science might mean for the conception of theory in ESE research as well its delineation from data- or practice-driven research.

Bengtsson, S., & Lysgaard, J. (2023). Fiction science: Substance E as technological intervention from a future. In B. Baker, A. Saari, A. Prasad, & L. Wang (Eds.), Flashpoint Epistemology - Education in the Age of Interconnection and Complexity: Routledge. Bengtsson, S., & Lysgaard, J. A. (2022). Irony and environmental education: on the ultimate question of environmental education, the universe and everything. Environmental Education Research, 1-16. doi:10.1080/13504622.2022.2080809 Harman, G. (2012). Weird realism: Lovecraft and philosophy: ZERO books. Saari, A., & Mullen, J. (2020). Dark places: environmental education research in a world of hyperobjects. Environmental Education Research, 26.

With this presentation we share some fictionalised stories of the (non) use of theory in environmental education research. We think with contemporary theories of mind and the new materialisms to explore when and where the theory/practice divide has broken down for us as we have gone about environmental education (research). We discuss relatively ordinary events: teaching, presenting at a conference, and writing for publication to demonstrate how thinking and practice never exist independently of each other. We consider how thinking/practices make some practices/thoughts possible, and others impossible. We present three stories as partially fictionalised accounts to ask both where and when thinking occurs: We talk with students and trees on the Cairngorms Plateau; we are heckled by an audience member as we present a paper, and we receive reviews on a submitted manuscript, where the reviewer inquires, seemingly earnestly, if we’d be concerned about the presence of wolves when camping, given our philosophical orientation. These stories are indicative of Derrida’s often misunderstood/misquoted statement, ‘There is nothing outside text’, often mistaken for ‘there is no reality outside of language’. When we might suggest, for instance, that ‘nature’ is a cultural construction, we are not stating that the wolves on the ridge above your tent aren’t ‘real’, in some way. What we are saying is that the concept or idea of nature is entirely invented, and as such can perform (or be practised) in myriad ways. The concept ‘wolf’ is just as illusory and performs differently for different people and cultures over time. It can still bite you, whatever ‘it’ is, regardless of how it is conceived. Of course, postmodernists aren’t trying to deny the existence of reality, ‘they are talking about whether meaning can be derived from observation of the real world’ (Scott, 1996). This well-known ‘debate’ helps frame our thinking with these stories as we think with new theories of mind and the material turn to think social construction as itself materially real. With each story, we speculate on the material ‘when’ and ‘where’ of the thinking at hand to demonstrate thinking’s already environ(mental) nature. This, and the other examples we present, helps to demonstrate how thoughts occur as environments, rather than occurring over and against them. This immanent take reveals situations thinking, as events, and demonstrates a missing territory of reality (and research), in that it literally matters what theories we think with, or ‘use’, in environmental education research.

Scott, J. (1996). Postmodern Gravity Deconstructed, Slyly. New York Times. Published: May 18, 1996 Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/18/nyregion/postmodern-gravitydeconstructed-slyly.htm

This presentation will discuss trajectories of social and geographic theory that have prompted new angles of ESE research, namely: policy mobilities and network studies, affect theory, and infrastructure studies. Each will be introduced with some of the types of interconnected analyses they have prompted in my, with colleagues, recent empirical research and their potential usefulness for ESE. Policy mobilities theory developed out of geography during the 2010’s shaped by the mobility turn in the social sciences. Attention is given to flows and networks of ideas, people, technologies, and how they shape social policy (Peck & Theodore, 2012). It includes consideration of specific locations and their influence on the mobilities of policy, such as local social and political contexts, physical materialities, or other specifics of territory (Robinson, 2015). This has enabled analyses on how ESE policy moves (or not) across intergovernmental, national, and subnational settings, as well on the roles of policy actors and networks in the global mobilities of, for example, ESD, EE, and climate change education. Also drawn from geographical scholarship, as well as anthropology and literary studies, critical materialist theories of affect have been helpful for thinking through drivers of the relative mobilities of ESE policy (e.g. Anderson, 2014). This includes an understanding of affect as socially mediated and circulated, including in relation to other material and nonlinguistic considerations, and as part of what shapes the priorities of policy making on ESE. Finally, infrastructure studies is an interdisciplinary field which considers the social shaping and impact of physical ‘things’ or ‘systems,’ such as school buildings and associated digital, water, waste, and energy infrastructures. As Appel and colleagues (2018) suggest, attention to the materiality of infrastructure indicates how it is central to our ‘sensory, somatic, and affective’ habitation of the world (p. 25). Infrastructures are part of what shapes the mobilities of education policy and also have their own environmental and climate costs (such as the high emissions of the increasing digital platformisation of education governance). These examples will be elaborated to show some ways that researchers can ‘use theory to think with their data (or use data to think with theory)’ (Youngblood Jackson & Mazzei, 2012, p. 2) in generative ways for ESE research, policy, and practice. It suggests that cross-disciplinary reading can be indispensable for making new connections and helping point to critical gaps in current ESE policy making and practice (McKenzie, Lewis, & Gulson, 2021).

Appel, H., Anand, N., & Gupta, A. (2018). Introduction: Temporality, politics, and the promise of infrastructure. In N. Anand, A. Gupta, & H. Appel (Eds.), The promise of infrastructure. Duke University Press. Anderson, B. (2014). Encountering affect: Capacities, apparatuses, conditions. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. McKenzie, M., Lewis, S., & Gulson, K. (2021). Matters of (im)mobility: beyond fast conceptual and methodological readings in policy sociology, Critical Studies in Education, 62 (3), 394-410. doi: 10.1080/17508487.2021.1942942 Peck, J. & Theodore, N. (2012). Follow the policy: A distended case approach. Environment and Planning A, 44, 21–30. doi:10.1068/a44179. Robinson, J. (2015). ‘Arriving at’ urban policies: The topological spaces of urban policy mobility. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 39, 831–834. doi:10.1111/1468- 2427.12255 Youngblood Jackson, A., & Mazzei, L. (2012). Thinking with theory in qualitative research: Viewing data across multiple perspectives. Routledge.