Conference Agenda

The aim of this proposal is to consider the partnership experienced through an artistic practice on Agro-Ecological Transition (AET) from January 2022 to June 2023) in Southern France. The partners worked at the crossroads of National Support Disposal (NSD) for the French Agricultural Training System and the nationwide Institut Agro (IA) agronomy engineers Higher Education School (Montpellier-Rennes-Dijon). The documentary theatre (based on documents to create a dramatisation) was chosen to experience otherwise the AET teaching sessions and understand the developing skills. On one hand, the sensitive dimension of partnership through artistic activities has already been introduced (Covez, 2022). On the other hand, the capacity of embodying the agroecology concept through artistic practices has also been studied (Covez, 2017). Since 2019, the AET has become the priority of the agricultural education. Each secondary school therefore created an Educational AET Plan, to reinforce the trainings. The IA has created a one-year fund to make the three higher education schools meet up to experiment new ways of learning AET. This initiative consisted in creating a mixed teachers/agro-engineers students documentary theatre activity (December 2022) and, for the students to communicate upon it (April 2023). The AET education refers to: links to terrain and action, peers learning, multidisciplinary and hybridisation of learning forms (pragmatic…) and systems theories. All of this in a transition framework of uncertain, controversial and non-stabilized notions (FAO, 2020-Audet, 2015). Then, this theatre practice represents a real opportunity for mixing people in the aim of AET learning experience, creating and communicating. The partnership gathers up research and pedagogical engineers, a microbiology Professor, two teachers, five students, and Théo, artist from the Cortège de tête company.

The question is “Does a documentary theatre practice partnership contribute to an agroecological transition education ?”. Actually, as the partnership action-research goes on, it exposes itself to difficulties. Our aim is then to understand and deal with those difficulties for the greater good ! First, agroecology means training to a constant collective change within the framework of the urgent climate change, which means a lot to the participants in terms of cognitive, social, emotional and educational matters. Consequently, the partnership (Otrel-Cass & Ali, 2022) is now facing risks of Rennes students disengagement (Bordes, 2015) and misunderstanding that need the joint accompaniment on pedagogical and artistic approaches from Montpellier. The fact is that French engineers are well known now, in their wish of quitting “bifurquer” during or after their diploma. Their wish is to get out of higher schools partly dedicated to polluting agriculture and industries instead of addressing social injustice matters and ecology. On the contrary, documentary theatre can be seen as encouraging a renewal of professional, collective and personal AET postures where a shared vision for the future is involved (Hervé, 2022) where society building matters.

This theatre can create a shared understanding, as its practice encourages concept sharing and scene creating from shared ideas and emotions. All of this enhanced by the final work representation. The strength of this educational situation comes from embodiment of change boosted to enaction (Masciotra & ali 2008) in Anthropocene times. Finally, it helps creating an integrating and balancing situation with cognitive and bodily activities. The acceptance of the sensitive process inside us and all together enriches but also provokes some unbalance and change that we have to face to keep on acting, creating and partnering. The risks are real but may encourage a change for AET. As co-sharing while becoming aware of points of view and experience differences (Mérini, 2012), our common engagement is strengthening in the objective of creating a transformative change through partnership (Laing & Ali, 2022).

Contemporary social, economic and ecological challenges represent persistent problems in our society. The call for education to engage with these challenges, further referred to as ‘sustainability challenges’, is increasing (Duraiappah et al., 2021; Kuijer-Siebelink, 2022). Especially the higher, professional and vocational forms of education are searching for new pedagogies and for new structures to address these challenges, because common disciplinary and institutional ways of learning appear to fall short (Lotz-Sisitka et al., 2015; O’Brien et al., 2013). Increasingly, parts of the educational curriculum take place in transdisciplinary partnerships between education and society, so-called collaborative learning arrangements (Coenders, 2020; Zitter, 2021). This tendency in practice is accompanied by a growing body of literature that provides directions of how to make the collaborative arrangements for sustainability work (Tassone et al., 2018; Wals, 2007).

The collaborative learning design is ideally based on principles for responsible education (Tassone et al., 2018): education for society which means fully engaging with the interconnectedness and complexity of sustainability issues and staying with the complexity through an open ended learning process rather than an orientation on solving the issues; education with society which refers to reciprocal and empathic interaction about issues between educational actors and other actors in society whose matters of concern are at stake. The third one, whole person education, refers to embodied, critical and creative forms of learning by integrating cognitive knowing, being and doing.

The collaborative arrangements address the larger whole, the context, the relationships and interactions, and the many dimensions of system levels that emerge in the process. Their aim is to be critical, to identify structural causes of issues and to develop systemic rather than partial interventions (Montuori, 2013)

Such learning arrangements are typically guided by collaborative pedagogies. These pedagogies are associated with social learning as ‘learning that takes place when divergent interests, norms, values and constructions of reality meet in an environment that is conductive to learning’ (Wals, 2007, p. 18) and with transdisciplinary learning as learning that ‘takes into account all relevant disciplinary and societal perspectives of a challenge which may be different each time’ (Visscher-Voerman & Visscher, 2022, p. 2). Three key elements of the collaborative pedagogies are generally mentioned in literature and practice. The pedagogies are relational, as a reciprocal relation to other experiences, frames of references and knowledge, reflexive, as critical thinking regarding the (taken for granted) worldviews behind problem statements and solutions, and creative, as an ongoing process of experimenting with problem frames and scenario’s with regard to sustainable futures (Lenglet, 2022; Lindley, 2015). When the collaborative pedagogies lead to deep learning that affects the values and assumptions of the learners, they sometimes are identified as being transformative (Wals & Peters, 2017). Transformative forms of learning that affect a learners’ inner-self or ‘being’, appear to be necessary for dealing with sustainability challenges (Lotz-Sisitka et al., 2015; Woiwode et al., 2021).

While we theoretically know that collaborative learning works to contribute to sustainable futures and while the educational arrangements that address societal issues tend to be based on these principles, little is known about how these principles actually work in vocational education practices wherein these principles are espoused. There still seem to be differences between education’s stated desires for a more sustainable future and everyday’ s actions (McGrath et al., 2019; Wals et al., 2017). With this study we want to explore how the espoused collaborative sustainability oriented education manifests itself in practice. The aim of the study is to understand the next steps for education society partnerships to unfold a sustainable future.

In the context of the Anthropocene, schools have an important role to play in fostering societal creativity to develop sustainable solutions. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) takes up the challenge as it aims to empower young people to think and act for societal transformation towards sustainability (Sterling, 2011). Since the 2000s, the implementation of ESD, although its increasing presence in study plans, has faced various challenges related to productivist conceptions of education, school structure (curricula or disciplinary approaches for example), or the nature of the subjects worked on (Curnier, 2021). For example, in the curriculum of the French-speaking part of Switzerland, ESD is present in a transversal way and in a weak sustainability perspective. There are no constraints in its application and its teaching is not systematic. Nevertheless, many teachers have already taken up the subject, others would like to do so, but the proposed teacher training is not yet consolidated (Kyburz-Graber et al., 2013; Baumann & al, 2019). Moreover, research in the field still provides little support for the operationalisation of ESD, as it lacks empirical data (Shephard, 2022). Action research is a way of filling this gap between theory and practice, and a type of research with underlying paradigms coherent with those inherent to ESD.

In education, action research is defined as collaborative research that aims to share practices between researchers and practitioners to transform reality and reflect on this transformation (Sanchez & Monod-Ansaldi, 2015). The collaborative dimension of this type of research aims to make competencies explicit related to professional practices and to mediate between the research community and the community of practice (Morrissette, 2013). The process of such research ‘with’ is intended to be democratic in the definition, construction and analysis of the object of study among the participants. In addition to the scientific contribution, this type of research also seeks to strengthen the capacities of all participants, including teachers. Therefore, action research has a democratic and empowerment aim (Gayford, 2003), in adequation with the participatory nature of ESD. In theory, action research therefore aims to build a genuine partnership between the research and school communities, but in practice issues have been identified in the literature, such as asymmetrical power relations or complex facilitation roles for the researcher (Martin & Clerc-Georgy, 2017; Monceau & Soulière, 2017).

In this contribution, two case studies of action research illustrate different kinds of partnerships. One kind gathers partners within education, teachers of various school subjects and school levels working together with the researcher on didactic ‘thinking tools’ that empower teachers to plan and implement a transformative and action-oriented ESD. The other gathers pedagogical experts, field specialists and teachers to co-create, with the researcher, a lesson plan on rivers planning combining geography and ESD. The diversity in the first partnership lies in the various school subjects and levels, including an interdisciplinary aspect and the idea of a curricular progression, whereas the diversity in the second partnership lies in the very different nature of the involved partners, including a transdisciplinary knowledge construction. In this contribution, we will firstly identify the roles of the different partners in the action research process, with a special focus on the researchers. Secondly, we will analyse the opportunities and challenges that arise from these partnerships in order to improve possible synergies while implementing an ESD that enables societal transformation towards sustainability.