Conference Agenda

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.