Conference Agenda

The main aim of the paper is to discuss students' learning and personal development through developing scientific didactic models in education for sustainable development (ESD) based on rural small school conditions. A partial aim is to present a heuristic research methodology where collaboration between school staff, researchers, neighboring local actors, and the local geographical location contributes to developing ESD theory and practice.

Considering present eco-social-cultural challenges and respecting the earth's carrying capacity (Fettes och Blenkinsop, 2023) and planetary boundaries (Oziewicz, 2022) education is an important partner (Jickling et. al 2018). Hence, the need to understand practical challenges and to develop didactical tools for teaching and learning is crucial. Accordingly, this paper presents tentative results from a practice-based research project with three small schools in sparsely populated areas in the middle of Sweden.

The project builds on the assumption that schools’ geographical location is important for the kind of environmental and sustainability education that is possible and desirable. Furthermore, whereas place-based education research is common (see Yemini, Engel & Ben Simon 2023), research that focuses on small schools in sparsely populated communities is uncommon. In particular, the paper addresses questions concerning the potential of the local natural environment as an equally important partner in education. Other sustainability factors taken into consideration are how education can address migration into cities, extending formal education to formal-nonformal education in collaboration with neighboring local actors, and how to understand and organize students' learning in such teaching practice context (Miller, 2015). Furthermore, those schools often engage in the proximity of the local community, place, and the culture and history of local communities.

The paper builds on categorial Bildung-theory and critical constructive didactics (Klafki, 1995) to enable the importance of personal transformation change and the role of education in mastering the global challenges of an uncertain future (Wilhelmsson & Blenkinsop, accepted; Kvamme, 2021). Simultaneously, critical constructive didactics focuses on educational content and didactics as an intersection between theory and practice (Klafki, 2010). Didactic models are realized to the extent that they are used and tested in teaching practice where the practice is seen as both a starting point and frame of reference for didactic theory (Künzli, 2010). Furthermore, late Klafki introduces “epochal key problems” as important issues that are decisive for the future. This underlines the current and future responsibilities of both teachers and students and the readiness for learning and development that leads to mastering complex sustainability problems (Kvamme, 2021).

The research questions addressed are:

What challenges and opportunities are constituted in teaching for sustainable development in small schools in sparsely populated areas?

What are the pluralistic interaction areas for those schools with nature, the local community, and the socio-geographical location?

In what ways does a practical research methodology focusing on didactic models enable a locally relevant education for sustainable development?

Tentative results include:

Insights into how the school engages (and is engaged by) the local community in education for sustainable development.

Didactic models for locally relevant education for sustainable development, including appropriate skills and attributes, that relate critically and constructively to the school's mission.

A scientifically assessed research methodology that strengthens collaboration and is sustainable over time.

The research aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the interpretations of the out-of-school learning environment of environmental education.

The main research questions arise from a general understanding of the use and interpretation of the learning environment in environmental education.

1. How do teachers interpret the components of the learning environment outside school during the implementation of environmental education?

2. Are there any pattern-like links between teachers' and pupils' interpretations of the out-of-school learning environment in relation to the environmental education and between interpretations and implementation in general?

Our analysis is therefore necessarily preceded by a rethinking of the definition of the learning environment. We focus on the relationship between people and their environment, where understanding individual interpretations of the learning environment can be the key to successful environmental education.

If we think of space as a complex system of effects that provides the framework for the concrete realization of learning, then the continuous temporal variation of the system of effects also means that the conditions of learning are constantly changing (Banyard & Underwood, 2008). Some dimensions of the system of effects conceptualised as space are more closely related to the learning process, while others are indifferent to a particular aspect of the learning process (De Corte et al, 2003). We can define the learning factors that can be described and characterised in a learning space as the elements of the system of effections of the learning space, and thus our related studies also requires a complex approach in which we accept ab ovo that the learning process can only be examined in conjunction with the factors that influences it, along their interrelationships (Tókos et al, 2020). The complex web of relationships between factors that affects the learning space and defines a unit of interaction where abstraction and reflection are associated with learning are continuous or quasi-continuous. This interaction unit is the learning environment. Our understanding of learning environments argues that a given learning environment is always shaped by learning objectives and learning outcomes described in terms of the development of individual and community spaces (Dúll, 2010). In the learning environment, the factors that shape learning form a dynamically changing network and the elements of the network affect the activity system of the individual involved in the learning process in different ways. However, individual activity systems are necessarily interconnected. In most cases individual learning goals are formulated along the lines of the learning goals of the community (Engeström, 1987). So the individual learning outcomes can be interpreted along the lines of community learning outcomes, and community learning outcomes can only be interpreted along the lines of individual learning outcomes (Rusticus et al, 2023).

The learning outcomes of environmental education are linked to space, individual and community spaces, which, for some learning outcomes can be fundamental in determining the ideal learning environment for the learning activity (Agarvall et al, 2003; Varga, 2004). These learning outcomes can not only determine the ideal learning environment, but can also continuously shape it. As a result of the learning process, environmental knowledge is expanded, which allows for new and changing interpretations of the whole system of effects (the space around us). And the ideal learning environment supports the success of the learning process, therefore the precise definition of learning outcomes helps to create the ideal learning environment, as the elements that contribute to the achievement of the learning goals are highlighted in the learning space's effects (Corbett, 2002; Cseh, 2015).

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is regarded as one of the main drivers for a sustainable future. Embedding ESD within schools should be the focus of research, practice, and policy (UNESCO, 2020). While there is a growing body of empirical studies on its effects on teaching practices and student outcomes (Boeve-de Pauw et al., 2015; Olsson, 2018), research on the role of schools as organizations in ESD is still lacking, especially in contrast with the literature in educational management and school effectiveness (Creemers and Kyriakides, 2008; Teddlie and Reynolds, 2006; Verhelst et al., 2022; Verhelst et al., 2021). With the Whole School Approach gaining importance for embedding ESD in schools (Bosevska and Kriewaldt, 2020; Sasaki et al., 2023; Wals and Mathie, 2022), the need for a clear understanding of schools organizational functioning is even more evident.

Despite the approval of the school organization’s importance by more and more ESD scholars (Mogaji and Newton, 2020; Mogren, 2019; Scott, 2013; Verhelst et al., 2020), the characteristics that shape such an organizational context are still not very well documented in the international research literature (Kuzmina et al., 2020; Verhelst et al., 2020). Seeing that ESD is strongly shaped by the context wherein it is practiced, there is a strong need for a comparison of ESD within different geographical and cultural contexts (Kopnina and Meijers, 2014). While some frameworks on ESD within the school organization were developed based on insights from educational effectiveness research and school improvement research (Mogren et al., 2019; Verhelst et al., 2020), the generalizability of these frameworks across different contexts is still limited (Verhelst et al., 2021). Moreover, seeing that the general field of educational management and administration tends to be predominantly situated in the Anglo-American research traditions (Hallinger and Kovačević, 2019), cross-cultural comparisons pose a unique challenge, necessitating a deeper exploration to discern the applicability and cultural nuances of these frameworks.

In this presentation, we seek to address this scholarly gap by scrutinizing the complexities of ESD in Flemish and Japanese school organizations, offering a nuanced insight to discern the transferability and cultural intricacies of the implementation of ESD in school organizations. The theoretical framework at the base of this comparison is the framework for an ESD-effective school (Verhelst et al., 2020). The framework describes eight interconnected characteristics on a contextual and a central level, that have been connected to students’ outcomes in ESD (Verhelst et al., 2022). At the contextual level, sustainable leadership and school resources are situated. Sustainable leadership—defined by the adept adjustment of leadership styles considering holism, pluralism, and action orientation—combined with the school's resources, shapes the environment wherein six central characteristics manifest. These include Pluralistic Communication (fostering recognition and dialogue among diverse viewpoints), Supportive Relations (cultivating positive connections within the school and with external partners), Democratic Decision-Making (involving all relevant stakeholders in decision-making processes), Shared Vision of the School (cultivating a unified understanding of ESD and the school's commitment to it), Adaptability (responding effectively to internal and external demands or opportunities for change), and Collective Efficacy (believing that collective efforts positively impact students' ESD learning outcomes). Importantly, these characteristics collectively embody the ESD culture and organizational values, with their interrelated nature meaning that each can influence the others.

Our study aims to examine the factors contributing to the effectiveness of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Japanese and Flemish schools. Our primary research question is as follows: "To what extent and in what ways are school characteristics perceived and valued as instrumental traits in facilitating ESD in Japanese and Flemish schools?"

This paper makes two contributions to reconstructing science education curriculum. Its theoretical contribution is to define 'aesthetic knowing' and outline a rationale for cultivating it in science education responding to the ecological crisis. I argue that through the perception of relationships, 'aesthetic knowing' plays a necessary, albeit subterranean role in science education, and that science education should more explicitly cultivate aesthetic knowing, as well as the capacity to consider tradeoffs/synergies between aesthetic and other kinds of knowing. I suggest much of science's complicity in the ecological crisis is linked to discounting aesthetic knowing's role in empirical engagement, and curtailing its development in science education. Second, its practical contribution is to share and discuss approaches I have taken to developing 'aesthetic knowing' in ITE biology education across three different pedagogical contexts.

I first define aesthetic knowing, consider its relationship with other epistemic approaches, and outline what it offers to the perception, understanding and participation in empirical phenomena. Aesthetic knowing occurs when we 'catch' the gestalt (the form) quality of relations (Zwicky 2019). Put simply, aesthetic knowing is why we can perceive a melody rather than a sequence of detached notes, or recognise a face instead of a collection of disparate spatial features (Author a). Its capacity to home in on spatial and temporal relationships is necessary for the perception of 'ecological process' writ large, from co-constituting relations in gene regulation and other intracellular processes (Brookfield 2005), to organismic homeostatic and social interactions, up to the patterns and fluctuations of planetary biogeochemical cycles (Margulis & Sagan 1997). It is, however, not limited to trading simplistic linear models for 'systems theory' accounts emphasising circularity, feedback and so on (Orr 1992), which are rather skeletal illustrations of aesthetic knowing's capabilities. Aesthetic knowing doesn't merely perceive a face from the relation between eyes and nose and so on. It is also distinguishes one face from another -even if formally they contain all the same features. In other words, aesthetic knowing perceives not only form but the 'quality of relations' in the structures in catches. By perceiving the quality of relations between entities at various levels, aesthetic knowing perceives both nomothetic regularities and idiographic particularities in the gestalt of developing ecological systems (Author b). This includes sensing whether ecologies are healthy and thriving, or vulnerable or collapsing, which is crucial for education aiming for sustainability in both human health and biotic flourishing.

Most ecologies occur at spatiotemporal scales occluded from direct view. It is a pedagogical problem how we might 'train' our aesthetic knowing in encounter with them, because many tools to perceive such ecologies reduce the texture investigated relations into snapshots and summaries. I suggest starting with dynamics immediately available in students' worlds, and offer three easily accessed pedagogical domains. The first is the ongoing experienced ecology arising from the very relations between people in the classroom. Aspects of these relationalities can be foregrounded through diverse pedagogies. A second domain is the opportunity-rich relational space between students and other organisms in local outdoor learning, where students can develop deeper acquaintance with live ecological dynamics. The third involves incorporating arts into biology education (ex. STEAM). Not only can art cultivate closer observational capacity, creating art is a continuous training in ecological participation (van Boeckel 2007). These immediate contexts can prime students to expect similarly rich concrete dynamics at other ecological levels, and not be hoodwinked into assuming simplicity at other microscopic or macroscopic levels. This has consequences for epistemic claims at these levels, and how we evaluate the sustainability of technologies and interventions based on them.

Higher education institutions play a crucial role in educating future agents who are supposed to contribute to the successful implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The wicked nature of sustainability-related problems requires higher education institutions to re-design and broaden their curricula to become more real-life oriented and transdisciplinary by establishing connections among various disciplines and with non-academic partners from society (Sherren, 2008). Consequently, courses involving transdisciplinary learning approaches where students collaborate with peers with various disciplinary backgrounds and non-academic partners have become popular in higher education for sustainable development (Menon & Suresh, 2020).

Research has revealed numerous benefits of transdisciplinary learning settings for sustainability-oriented higher education. Students reported improved communication and teamwork skills, increased agency in terms of enhanced self-efficacy and self-regulation skills (Adefila et al., 2023) after participating transdisciplinary courses. Additionally, students became more willing to collaborate with societal stakeholders and were more open to different perspectives, as demonstrated in research on transdisciplinary learning workshop (Oonk et al., 2022). Another prominent learning outcome of transdisciplinary learning, mentioned by multiple studies, was that it empowered learners as agents capable of addressing sustainability-related problems and instigating changes through collective actions (Horner et al., 2021; Tassone et al., 2017).

While transdisciplinary learning for sustainability offers rich learning benefits, it is also regarded as a challenging learning process by many studies. Research on learners’ experiences highlighted that, due to the different and even conflicting viewpoints in transdisciplinary learning process for sustainability, engaging non-academic partners and integrating various disciplinary knowledge and capacities are difficult (Killion et al., 2018). As a result, students might simplify sustainability-related problems by not including all stakeholders and avoided authentic transdisciplinary learning experience by narrowing their focus (Veltman et al., 2021).

Current research recognizes transdisciplinary learning is a promising yet challenging approach for higher education for sustainability. However, hardly any research has been done to connect challenges in learning experience with the learning outcome of increased agency. It is still unclear what agency in transdisciplinary learning for sustainability entails and how it manifests itself in dealing with the corresponding challenges.

This present review study adopts a systems perspective by taking all three main groups of actors in transdisciplinary learning for sustainability-namely, students, educational staff and societal partners-into account and regards them as equal learners. The study aims to address the above-mentioned scientific gap and provide advice for future empirical research by mapping out the learning challenges in transdisciplinary learning experience from various learners’ perspective. It also explores how learners exert their agency to deal with challenges in transdisciplinary learning, and in return, increase their agency on both individual and collective levels. Agency for sustainability that refers to the intentions and corresponding capabilities to take individual, proxy or collective actions to continuously motivate and regulate individual and collective learning for sustainability will be used as conceptual framework of this review study . Proxy agency means accomplishing desired outcomes by employing others who are more proficient or in better situation, and collective agency refers to acting together with others (Bandura, 2006). The study addresses the following research questions:

1. What are the experienced challenges in transdisciplinary learning for sustainability from perspectives of academic staff, students, and societal actors?
2. What do these different learners take individual agentic actions to address challenges in transdisciplinary learning for sustainability?

Learning a way out of socio-ecological problems is often seen as vital for transforming our society into a more sustainable direction (van Mierlo et al. 2020). There is a growing body of research literature on how learning processes may contribute to so-called ‘sustainability transitions’ (STs): profound and long-term transformations of non-sustainable structures, cultures, and practices into more sustainable alternatives (Köhler et al. 2019). A recent review of this literature shows, however, that ‘the complexity of the relationship between learning and transitions is not deeply analysed’ (Stam et al. 2023). This confirms earlier findings which revealed a poor conceptual and empirical underpinning of research on learning in STs. Van Mierlo and Beers (2020, p. 255) argue that well-established research fields related to learning which could provide valuable insights are ‘broadly ignored or loosely applied’. Van Poeck et al. (2020, p. 303) similarly report on conceptual haziness and a lack of ‘a clear, consistent understanding of the relation and distinction between “learning” and the changes in society that may be the result of it’. Van Mierlo et al. (2020, p. 253) edited a special issue on the topic and conclude that there is a need for conceptual work that goes ‘beyond a superficial use of notions such as social learning and double-loop learning’. Furthermore, they raise concerns about a weak empirical knowledge base which impedes progress in our understanding of learning in STs. Learning is often assumed to take place, the editors argue, but it is neither specified nor critically investigated. Van Poeck et al. (2020) also discuss how empirical research contributions often fail to convincingly reveal that, what, and how people are learning in practices striving for STs.

This paper aims to further explore – theoretically and empirically – how learning takes place in the context of ST initiatives. We do so with a focus on the occurrence of a pedagogical space and time within settings and initiatives that primarily have a political purpose of fostering social change. We theoretically conceptualise and empirically investigate the emergence of what Garrison (2010) calls ‘teachable moments’ and how these may be seized as unique pedagogical opportunities which may evolve into ‘educative moments’ (Garrison et al. 2015). Teachable moments are those moments when the participants are drawn into shared inquiry regarding some problematic situation and desire to explore possibilities together. In informal learning settings we call this ‘educable’ moments as there is no formal teaching at play. We investigate how such moments arise in ST initiatives and under which conditions they give rise to educative moments in which critical and creative inquiry results in imagining or developing novel possibilities for the future.

Through three case studies of a variety of initiatives aimed at fostering STs in the food, mobility, and energy system, we thus aim to contribute to strengthening the conceptual and empirical underpinning of research on learning in STs. On the one hand, we further conceptualise learning in STs by theorising how a pedagogical time and space within political settings of social change can be understood in terms of (not always predictable and plannable) educable moments which may or may not evolve in a shared inquiry into collective matters of concern and, eventually, educative moments where novel pathways for the future emerge. On the other hand, we create empirically grounded knowledge about how this takes place, conditions for it to happen, and how it can be facilitated.

In this paper, we address students' emotions in existential situations in climate change education (CCE) and present empirical research on how different didactic approaches affect experiencing, expressing and reflecting on these emotions and, by extension, learning about the existential challenge of climate change (CC).

Indeed, several studies highlight that CC can lead to existential experiences and associated emotions. For example, Bergdahl & Langmann (p. 407, 2022) state that "climate change is closely linked to the existential fear of losing something valuable and irreplaceable - here: planet earth as our only home - which generates feelings of worry, helplessness and hopelessness in both adults and children”. At the same time, several scholars have pointed out that we need to pay attention to these existential experiences and related emotions in climate education or to provide “an educational space and time for youth to confront and begin to deal with their own existential worries and concerns' (Todd, 2020: 1112) and “that emotions and existential questions must be taken into account, and when education about climate change proceeds, the educators must be sensitive to that which arises” (Pihkala, 2018, p. 560). Previous research (Verlie, 2019; Pihkala, 2018) provides insight into the emotions that climate change can evoke as well as into different approaches for educators to deal with these emotions (Ojala, 2016; Verlie, 2021). These approaches have been found to differ in the way they can either align more with a therapeutic pedagogy or with a critical affective pedagogy (Amsler, 2011). However, there is little or no research that focuses on developing detailed, precise didactic knowledge about how emotions in existential situations relate to the didactic work of the teacher nor how this didactic work affects students’ learning in relation to the existential challenge of climate change. It is precisely this kind of knowledge creation that this paper aims to contribute to. We do so by analysing a Master's course in English literature at a Belgian university, where the teacher deliberately sought to address the existential challenge of CC, while at the same time being very aware of the emotions that might arise among the students.

With this research, we are particularly interested in uncovering and understanding how different didactic approaches influence experiencing, expressing and reflecting on emotions and through this learning regarding the existential challenge of climate change. Thus, we gain further insight into how teachers can deal ethically and pedagogically with emotions in the context of CCE and how we can better understand the risks and opportunities of emotions emerging in the CCE classroom.

The theoretical framework underpinning our study is transactional didactic theory (Östman et al. 2019, a, b) based on the pragmatist work of John Dewey. This theory understands learning as being incited by a 'problematic situation', for instance through encountering existential anxiety or dilemmas, or alternative perspectives on what life is, what it means to live, and how to live well that one has never considered before. This triggers an 'inquiry' that can result in new knowledge, skills, values and beliefs. The transactional theory of teaching, then, focuses on how teachers' actions in, both, the preparation and implementation of lessons affect the encounters that take place and what students learn from them. This is grasped in terms of the scripting of purposes and roles, the staging of a learning environment (objects of attention and activities), and the performance of interventions that help to guide students' learning.

Within this paper, we consider hope through two key aspects of the TPACK framework. Firstly, how the role of technology in the TPACK framework intersects with hope for a sustainable future, and how may hope and hopeful practices play a role in the learning design. And, secondly, the role of context and how, and in what ways do teachers focus on hopefulness (hope elements) in the TPACK framework in response to building capacity and resilience towards a sustainable and hopeful future? This paper forms part of a larger doctoral thesis project on hope and hopeful practices in the classroom in response to climate issues.

Education for social change is largely based on hope, with hope and education inspiring each other. Paulo Freire states that “Without hope there is no way we can even start to think about education” (2007, p.87). In positioning teachers as active respondents, a core component of their work is as learning designers, in which teachers turn to the use of models or frameworks for designing curriculum and making pedagogical decisions. One such framework is the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). Based on Shulman’s Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), the TPACK framework seeks to capture the essential elements of teacher knowledge required by teachers for the effective integration of technology in teaching whilst addressing the complex and situated nature of this knowledge. The three primary forms of knowledge that intersect each other are content, pedagogical and technological. As a framework, it has much to offer to the discussion of technology integration at multiple levels including, theoretical, pedagogical and methodological. Whilst TPACK has been predominately used for learning design, in response to climate related issues this paper considers how the TPACK model fits with educating for a sustainable future. Significant environmental events can be unpredictable, they often cause disruption, uncertainty and instability. The complexity to be discussed here is in the form of the intersection of hope, hopeful practices in education and in understanding how it may fit into curriculum and pedagogies. In the rapidly changing socio-environmental landscape we have seen, at extraordinary rates, socio-ecological crises, such as floods, wildfires and heatwaves across the globe. With eco-anxiety increasing and the wellbeing of our young people being a concern, it is timely to look at this model with a new set of eyes to see what it has to offer in way of dealing with the unprecedented climate uncertainties young people are facing.

In the face of current climate uncertainty, teachers have a multi-faceted and challenging role of educating and caring for the whole student. Exacerbated by successive extreme weather events and natural disasters, there is growing evidence linking mental health and climate change with it being reported that students are experiencing greater levels of environment related stress and anxiety. Along with stress and anxiety frequently comes the feeling of despair. Hope is often discussed in terms of its binary opposite, despair. At the essence, hope is something that is universally experienced by everyone and can be found in a multitude of arenas, for example in sport, religion, the media, technology, medicine, politics, education. Snyder et al (2017) simply describes hope as “the belief that one can find pathways to desired goals and become motivated to use those pathways” (p. 28). We often look to the feeling of being hopeful to draw on resilience in the face of adversity. Our contribution to the ongoing narrative of eco-anxiety is to discuss the conditions of TPACK as a possibility for more hopeful teaching practices for a sustainable future.

This paper reports on an on-going project where we follow sustainability education in an upper secondary school where the student group is composed of adults with a migrant background. In this school they are called “participants” rather than “pupils” to emphasize their status as adults.

For the past three years the school has organized an interdisciplinary sustainability week where students and teachers spend all available time on project related activities. The topics for the sustainability week have been broad: “clothes”,“water” and “food”.

Diversity is the norm at this school, and the classrooms are filled with people talking together in many different languages, while Norwegian is being used as the teaching language. The participants’ Norwegian competency varies, but students need to pass a minimum competency level. When students and teachers learn about and explore sustainability issues during the sustainability week, they bring with them knowledge and experiences from previous education as well as multilingual language resources, concepts and vocabularies. They also enter a situation where they are to discuss complex issues across their differences in a language that only the teacher fully masters. This classroom context accentuates the complexity of sustainability issues education. Not only are the topics contentious and complicated in the way they connect micro and macro perspectives on society, nature, economy, politics and culture, but the didactical opportunity structure is contingent upon the linguistic and cultural diversity of the classroom.

Our study is guided by three research questions, and we ask:

• which subject positions become available to the participants through the classroom discourse on sustainability?
• how are the participants' backgrounds and experiences expressed in the classroom?
• how is Norway constructed as an actor in relation to sustainable development?

One easily observable feature of sustainability discourse is the positioning of a broad, human ‘we’ who now face the crises caused by global warming and loss of biodiversity. This broadly formulated ‘we’ has been criticized for obscuring how global inequity and injustice position people in different places differently. Bylund and Knutsson (2020) show how sustainability education is conducted in ways that reflect and naturalize existing privileges and structures of (economic) domination and disadvantage. Pashby and Sund (2020) make a similar observation that Environmental and Sustainability Education reproduce a ‘we’ situated in the global north that is construed as providing knowledge of, and solutions to, problems of the Global South. Colonial path dependencies do have an impact also on education systems, and Andreotti (2016, p. 102) describes how the concept of the nation state is presented as a given and benevolent category that elevates it “to a place beyond critique”. In our study, we follow a classroom in the global north where the majority of the students have origins in the global south, which gives an opportunity to explore the construction of subject positions taking place in ESD and the characteristics ascribed to Norway’s practices and responsibility for sustainable development. The construction of subject positions taking place in classroom discourse will influence on the status of the participants’ knowledge and previous experiences from education, employment, politics and daily life in their countries of origin. To analyze the status and use of various knowledge sources, we draw on literature from multilingualism studies (García & Li, 2014). The concept of epistemic justice enables us to construct migrant students as knowers and producers of knowledge (Kerfoot & Bello-Nonjengele, 2022). While multilingual approaches in education provide access in a language students master allowing them to make epistemic contributions, Kerfoot and Bello-Nonjengele (2022) argue that this is not enough to obtain epistemic justice as “hierarchies of value and relations of knowing [are left] unchallenged” (p. 3).

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 peoples’ capabilities for acting in response to those issues. Climate change education in particular is a ‘hyper-complex’ concept (Læssøe et al., 2009) as it brings two independently complex concepts of ‘education’ and ‘climate change’ together. Greer and Glackin (2021, pp.16-17) set out six qualities of a meaningful educational response to climate change, 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 ‘recognise and support students as agents of change’. The final quality requires students to be repositioned from mere recipients of knowledge to recognising them as ‘collaborators in society’s transformation’. Therefore, the development of climate change and sustainability education (CCSE) ought to engage with young people’s perspectives and experience in meaningful ways.

In 2022, the Department for Education (DfE, 2022) launched the Sustainability and climate change strategy for the education which sets out the UK Government’s commitment to providing CCSE for children and young people in England which “Makes a difference to children and young people all over the world”. While this is a laudable aim, research suggests teachers do not currently feel equipped to provide the CCSE required by the strategy; for example, Greer et al. (2023) found there was lack of initial teacher education (ITE) and professional development related to CCSE (e.g., less than half of teachers reported any formal professional development). Dunlop and Rushton’s (2022) analysis of the DfE’s strategy identifies differences between priorities of the strategy and those of teachers. Whilst this teacher survey provides one lens on CCSE, there remains a need to find out directly about young people’s perceptions and understandings of CCSE in order to provide a more comprehensive youth-led contribution to policy and practice in England and globally.

Our research was designed to connect an understanding of young people’s perspectives on CCSE, with their feelings about climate change and connections to nature, which have been typically focussed upon within separate research studies or surveys. For example, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH, 2023) published a report on ‘young people’s perspectives on how to tackle climate change’ which represents the views of over 95,000 children and young people, showed that children globally are experiencing “eco-anxiety” fuelled by climate change concerns. Whilst the Climate of Change (2021) poll conducted by Ipsos surveyed more than 22,000 people aged 15-23 years old across 23 European countries and found that 84% of young people were worried about climate change and 65% considered that it will affect them directly.

The development of the survey was guided by the following research questions: 

1. What are young people’s understandings of climate change and sustainability? To what extent do they align with scientific consensus?
2. What are young people’s perceptions of how climate change and sustainability education is, and should be, taught in schools?
3. In what ways are young people engaging with climate change and sustainability education in schools?
4. How do young people feel about climate change?
5. In what ways are these perspectives related to young people’s feelings of connection with nature?

Whilst this research is anchored by the contributions of the young people, we decentred the human as we have taken a posthuman approach to questioning the ways in which entanglements with the more-than-human lifeworlds are visible, underdeveloped or absent in broader perceptions of CCSE.

Into today’s climate, children and youth are faced with constant uncertainties that relate to realities of environmental and social crises. In the case of one of these issues, climate change, studies have found that children and youth are often misinformed or not informed about actions, attitudes, and behaviors that contribute to “unsustainable patterns…that exceed the capacities of the Earth’s ecological systems” (Rousell, & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2020, p. 191) and that fail to foster healthy habits that encourage deep understanding and dedication for environmental sustainability. Children and youth need access to spaces that offer opportunities to critically explore and deeply understand the issues we all face, and teachers need support in developing strategies for making these spaces accessible and available.

While many teachers recognize the importance of teaching about these topics, many struggle with a challenge of understanding what it looks like to effectively support students in developing the understandings, skills, and habits necessary to nurture seeds of real change (Rousell, & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2020). Equally important is the work of teacher educators as they consider how to support pre-service teachers in learning how to meaningfully foster student learning around issues that are so universally critical (Favier, Van Gorp, Cyvin, & Cyvin, J. 2021).

This longitudinal, ethnographic case study focuses on the learning of a group of teachers (the Citizen Scientist Curriculum Team) who are engaged in the challenge of developing pedagogical practices that directly and deeply connect students to environmental issues that impact us all. The study offers one example of teachers who are seeking to untangle questions of teaching and learning in the context of a real issue (environmental sustainability) and the journey of the group as they have devised, implemented, reflected on, and then revised curriculum and pedagogical practices through in multiple iterations.

Members of the Citizen Scientist Curriculum Team work at a variety of schools in New York City. The curriculum they designed prioritizes hands-on, project-based learning that emphasized an inquiry into the health of local waterways. Students engage in cycles of place-based scientific fieldwork, data analysis, and synthesis.

In addition to exploring these dilemmas in their own work, the group also created space for pre-service teachers to work alongside them as they engaged in this messy and imperfect work. This added complexity and also richness to the experience as members of the team learned from each other and pushed themselves to take pedagogical risks that were designed to enhance student connections to hands-on, field-based curriculum that was designed to explore environmental sustainability.

The research questions related to this study are:

1. What do teachers do together in a space where they are attempting to reimagine the boundaries of what teaching and learning look like, especially in the context of elevating the importance issues such as climate change with students?

2. As they reflect on multiple year-long iterations of creation, implementation, reflection, and revision as members of the Citizen Scientist Curriculum Team, how do teachers talk about their own evolution as professionals?

Need for research

This study focuses on the topic citizen involvement (also known as „citizen participation“, “citizen engagement“ or as „civic involvement“). The topic civic engagement is linked to the topics deliberation, empowerment and democratic learning. In addition, it is currently a central and rapidly growing task of local authorities in decision-making processes. The author Georg Weisseno notes, „Society and educational policymakers expect political education to contribute to the development of democratic attitudes and the associated on willingness to participate. This should be achieved in all areas in order to prevent illiberal, autocratic and authoritarian behaviour.“ (See Weisseno, G. 2023, Learning through political participation. p. 317). The concept of civic engagement is defined as „working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make a difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes.“ (Ehrlich, Preface, p. vi, In: Oxford handbook of political participation, p. 382) In the study, reference is mainly made to participatory and informal areas and forms of participation in the information, consultation and co-decision (cooperation and decision-making) stages. These areas are designated to in the literature as less formalized or unconventional forms of citizen participation. Three substantial areas of political participation in democracy are distinguished:

• Participation in representative structures (e.g. elections),
• co-determination on direct issues (e.g. referendum),
• Participatory forms of participation (e.g. citizen dialogs).

The study focuses on the informal type of civic participation. Informal participation refers to dialog-oriented, consultative and freer procedures in which citizens come together to form opinions or make decisions. The concept of citizen participation is understood to mean both, a top-down as well as a Bottom-up strategy for political participation. The focus of the study lies on the practice of civic involvement and how municipalities deal with the challenges in this field.

The project focuses on the issue/problem of citizenship education as a tool to contribute to the promotion of youth well-being. The research hypothesis relates the phenomenon of youth existential distress to the lack or absence of life skills, and the construct of active citizenship and education for its exercise as educational key categories and tools to promote such skills and contribute to dealing with the phenomenon of youth existential distress.The research questions were the following: What is the role and influence of beliefs and efficacy in life skills on the development of positive thinking and subjective well-being of adolescents? What is the relationship between these two aspects and participatory processes, the propensity to assume forms of responsibility and civic engagement, and the development of active and proactive attitudes towards the future?

The research aimed to understand the relationship between the phenomenon of youth existential distress and the lack of life skills; to understand the relationship between the perception of one's own effectiveness in life skills, the perception of well-being and the lack of forms of positive thinking and the propensity to project oneself positively and responsibly into the future; to pedagogically re-signify the construct of active citizenship and its implementation through a bottom-up approach.

The research focuses on one of the educational emergencies facing pedagogy and education today: the challenge of the existential distress of adolescents, understood as the difficulty in performing "normal" evolutionary tasks. The data provided by ISTAT (2019), SIP (2022), UNICEF (2021) are alarming and show the increase, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic, in mental disorders between 10 and 19 years old and in suicides between 15 and 19 years old. The interpretation used was pedagogical, with the aim of formulating the issue from the point of view of the subject educability. For this reason, the research did not focus on pathological distress, but on those forms of socially compatible, often invisible distress that Sergio Tramma (2019) includes in what he calls the "grey zone". The epistemological framework of the research is that of complexity theory (Morin, 2000; Ceruti 1994, 2020, 2021), the capability approach (Sen, 1986, 1993, 1994; Nussbaum, 2011, 2012, 2013), ecological theory (Brofenbenner, 2002), the sustainability paradigm (ONU, 2015) and global citizenship education (UNESCO, 2017; 2023).

Attention to skills is at the heart of the research, and reference is made to the numerous national and international documents that stress the need to promote not only knowledge in the younger generations, but also the ability to be and the ability to do (WHO, 1993; OECD, 2021; UNICEF, 2021; European Commission, 2020). First of all, the Council Recommendation on key Competences for Lifelong Learning (2018), which questions the construct of citizenship and civic competences for the integral education of the subject. In this sense, the research identifies citizenship education as a way to counter existential distress, together with educational approaches based on the promotion of life skills. In this sense, citizenship education is seen as a practice of developing the future (Pignalberi, 2020), taking on a capacitive and educational meaning and using concepts such as empowerment, agency, participation, individual and collective well-being self-efficacy, fundamental protective factors against the emergence of forms of discomfort.

Citizenship Education (CE) has gained prominence in addressing democratic challenges arising from global inequality, climate change, migration, and pandemics. CE is widely considered an essential tool for equipping learners to meet these challenges (Kolleck 2022). It can be broadly defined as a concept that summarises all educational processes aimed at preparing individuals for their role as citizens, ensuring their access to rights and responsibilities, and promoting active participation in democratic societies (Osler & Starkey 2006). Although traditionally regarded as the domain of nation-states, the CE field has opened up to alternative actors, with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) emerging as significant contributors, leading to claims of an 'NGOisation' of CE (Ribeiro et al. 2016).

Education processes are no longer limited to national contexts but cross borders and involve diverse stakeholders, including practitioners, governments, intergovernmental organizations, businesses, and NGOs (DeMars 2005; Lubienski et al. 2022). NGOs are evolving as key players shaping educational content, practice, and governance. With their adaptability and flexibility, NGOs have become significant contributors to public education systems (Martens 2002). The ongoing globalization of education has led to the emergence of transnational NGO networks that transcend national boundaries by connecting diverse stakeholders (Menashy 2016). These networks are ascribed potential in addressing current challenges in education governance and implementation, particularly in areas such as CE. The increasing engagement of NGOs in transnational networks underscores their commitment to enhancing communication and collaboration, essential qualities for effective action in the globalized era. Transnational NGO networks in education serve various purposes, exhibiting different degrees of formality that range from unofficial partnerships to legally established coalitions (Goodwin 2009). As it has been argued that the form of a network should follow its functions, the structure of a network appears to be closely linked to specific functional needs (Hearn & Mendizabal 2011). However, despite the rising presence of transnational NGO networks as potentially impactful players in the CE field, there is a lack of understanding of their organisational structures as collective actors and a research gap on their roles and functions.

In order to address these gaps, this article conducts an analysis of a qualitative data set consisting of a series of semi-structured expert interviews with key NGO representatives from a selected group of five transnational NGO networks working on CE in Europe. It aims to answer the central questions: (1) What functions and roles do transnational NGO networks carry out in the field of CE in Europe?, (2) How are these functions and roles accomplished by networks through different organisational structures?, and (3) How do the structural characteristics of a network relate to its effective fulfilment of functions and roles?

The Network Functions Approach (NFA) serves as the study's analytical framework, focusing on the functions and roles of transnational NGO networks rather than just their organizational structures (Hearn & Mendizabal 2011). Through this lens, light can be shed on the dualistic nature between forms and functions as well as the networks’ potential to act as effective educational players or changemakers in the transnational sphere (Macpherson 2016). The NFA synthesizes five core functions: Knowledge management, amplification and advocacy, community building, convening, and resource mobilisation. These functions are essential for understanding the network's agency and support roles in effecting change and facilitating members' actions. The NFA offers a robust yet adaptable framework for the systematic analysis and comparison of these networks by providing categories to assess their formal shapes and actions. This article aims to contribute to the understanding of how transnational NGO networks operate, and the findings should inform future research, policy and strategic planning for transnational NGO networks working in CE.

The social crises of the last few years have led to social uncertainty among the younger generation (Andresen et al., 2022). In Germany, this is also accompanied by doubts about the existing democracy, especially among young people from middle and low educational backgrounds (Habich & Remete, 2023; Open Society Foundation, 2023). In addition, young people hardly feel noticed by politics, which reduces satisfaction with democracy (Vodafone Stiftung, 2022).

In Germany, youth work, youth organizations and clubs are important places for leisure activities and important settings for non-formal education. These activities bring together young people and the support of youth workers or educators, so that young people can express and organize themselves for their interests and take responsibility (Düx et al., 2008; BMFSFJ, 2012).

In these contexts, young people's insecurities are addressed by them having access to democratic forms of action, creating and establishing norms and values in everyday interactions and being able to communicate their needs and interests. Democracy – at least in the intention – is the “goal, object and practice of education” also in German youth work (BMFSFJ, 2020, p. 125).

The focus of the paper is the promotion of civic participation as a special approach to democratic education. Especially in the non-formal educational context of youth work, which is based on maxims such as voluntariness or interest orientation (Sturzenhecker, 2021; BMFSFJ, 2020), there are special participation opportunities for young people: Here participation itself is a maxim, and can have a variety of forms, f.e. the adoption of responsibility in youth associations, the participation in youth committees (e.g. youth parliaments) or informal participation through interactional everyday processes (Züchner & Peyerl, 2015).

The article therefore aims to discuss the extent to which (the facilitation of) participation in youth work as a non-formal place of education can enable democratic education.
To determine the goal of democratic education, discourses around citizenship learning draw on the distinction learning about, for and through democracy (Bîrcéa et al., 2004; Sant, 2019), which together supposed “the meaning and functioning, the normative expectations and perspectives for action as well as open up the rules, behavior, conventions and creative scope of democratic communities" (Edelstein, 2009, p. 82). While learning about democracy is primarily aimed at imparting knowledge, learning for democracy is primarily about promoting democratic value orientations (Kołczyńska, 2020).

In particular, learning through democracy is closely linked to Dewey's idea of democracy as “a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience” (Dewey, 1916/2023, p. 144). Dewey (1939/2021) assumes that democracy as a way of life is characterized by the ability to judge and act intelligently (Dewey, 1939/2021), which is achieved through experiential learning is acquired in one's own local area (Dewey, 1939/2021). Particularly in youth work, democratic education is strongly based on the idea of democracy as the idea of an “embryonic society” (Dewey, 1899/1980, p. 12) and fosters participation experiences.

Particularly for pedagogically initiated participation processes, the question arises, whether all forms of participation contribute to democratic education or whether democratic education as learning through democracy requires reflection processes that clarify the connection of everyday interactions and decision making to the concept of democracy. Drawing on the concept of democratic consciousness (Abdi & Carr, 2013), which includes one’s attention to social processes, an understanding and appreciation of democratic norms, sensitivity to different political power relations, and the recognition of rules and institutions for the creation of general obligations (Himmelmann, 2007), the article discusses the extent to which participation in youth work promotes democratic consciousness.

Bullying and victimization are persistent problems in countries around the world and affects the lives of many students (Thornberg, 2010; Gu, Lai, & Ye, 2011; Kochenderfer & Ladd, 1996; Ttofi & Farrington, 2009). Bullying is commonly defined as recurrent harassment or offence against an individual who is in a powerless position (cf. Hellström et al., 2021). It has been emphasized that in order to be called bullying, the recurrent aggression should be considered unwanted by someone and that an individual's experiences are also important to consider and not just the stated intention of the perpetrator(s) (Gladden et. al., 2014). National measurements in Sweden in recent years have shown an increase over time in bullying measured in percentage points (Bjereld et al. 2020; cf. Edling et al. 2022; Friends, 2022; SCB, 2020). The most significant increase can be observed among girls aged 13-15 years (Folkhälsomyndigheten, 2018, p. 40). This study is based on a request from a municipality in Sweden to help investigate how it comes that a surprisingly high proportion of girls in middle school (grades 4-6) felt exposed to victimization and bullying. In reoccurring measurements of victimization and bullying among students in a Swedish municipality it is shown that bullying and a sense of vulnerability amongst girls have increased by around 74 %, since 2016 (Simonsson, 2022).

In a large global study involving 46 countries, Cosma et. al (2022) found that the practice of traditional bullying and cyberbullying was more common among 11-15 year old boys than girls in most countries, while gender differences in victimization were mixed. One conclusion they draw is that one reason why major anti-bullying programmes are slow to show marked improvements in bullying patterns is because they do not address gender norms that are sometimes unconsciously embedded in societies.

In research on professional identity, a teacher’s vision or seeing, is regarded as an important factor that affects the quality of their teaching (Ibarra, 1999; Shulman, 1991) and is thus used as a framework in this study. According to Goodwin (1994), who introduced the concept of professional vision, a profession can be understood as the way in which a specific group creates a social organisation for seeing depending on what the specific profession requires its members to see or notice. In this context, professional seeing is linked to specialist knowledge that supports the group's understanding and ability to observe the relevant dimensions in practice (a.a.). Closely related to professional vision is professional identity, which is shaped by a person's task perception, i.e. their lenses of meaning-making through which they see a specific situation, e.g. education, and act on it (Kelchterman 2009, p. 260). Professional identity thus constitutes a framework for individuals that guides their perceptions and how they interpret and act in particular situations (see also Richter et. al. 2021).

In interviews with 62 school actors in three schools the importance of teachers’ seeing, referred to here as professional vision, became one key theme. With this as a background, the overall purpose of this study is to map the selective use of professional vision as a means to handle and grapple with as to why a relatively large number of girls in middle school in the selected municipality feel bullied or vulnerable to bullying.

1) How do students, teachers, health staff, and school leaders in three middle schools explain the importance and notion of professional vision in relation to gender victimization?

2) What possible gender differences exist in relation to what these actors argue is important to see [pay notice to] in relation to bullying/abusive behavior?

This study explores how women teachers in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan practise their leadership within their own established communities of practice and learn to understand gender inequalities and professional development practices in education. Beyond realising existing inequalities, women teachers share their critical hope of addressing those challenges and transforming professional development opportunities to be equitable for all. Through this understanding and critical hope, this paper hopes to influence policies in transforming leadership practices for women teachers in the educational milieu and fulfil the sustainable development goals.

The study backdrop, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a multi-ethnic developing country in South Asia that spotlights a decentralised education system with top-down leadership approaches. Gender disparities exist in teaching, where females predominate, but leadership positions are primarily held by males (Drudy, 2008). This entrenched 'top-down' leadership approach reflects the social hierarchies (Clarke et al., 2020). Moreover, teacher professional development faces insufficient funding, lack of practical resources, and low self-esteem among educators (Khan & Haseeb, 2017). These tensions highlight the underrepresentation of women and invisible educational inequalities within a decentralised, gendered, and socially stratified education system.

The study draws upon the concepts of ‘communities of practice’ (CoP) as a social theory of learning (Wenger, 1998) and ‘critical hope’ (Freire, 1994). CoP refers to “a social process of negotiating competence” (Farnsworth et al., 2016, p. 5), where individuals share concerns and obstacles, have an affinity for similar topics, and regularly interact to enhance their understanding and abilities. Wenger (1998) identifies three key dimensions that distinguish CoPs from other groups: mutual involvement in a community, joint domain of interests and a shared repertoire of lived resources developed or adopted by the community. These dimensions highlight teachers’ learning experiences in the discoveries about ‘knowing’ and ‘being’ of their self and society through CoP engagement. Teachers, through CoP participation, develop their professional identity and engage in critical self-reflection on teaching and learning (Wenger & Wenger-Trayner, 2015). Despite the growing recognition for CoPs’ potential for teacher professional development (e.g., Borg, 2012, Yıldırım, 2008), little has been discovered about how they work or function (Patton & Parker, 2017). While predicated on social learning, CoPs rarely take into account power dynamics within the contextual structures (Barton & Tusting, 2005). As a result, there is a need to modify the model of CoPs for teacher professional development that considers the power dynamics within and beyond educational practices.

Through the lens of social justice, the idea of critical hope (Freire, 1994) underscores the contextual structures and power relations inside them, and “systematically links the individual with a collective sense of transformation” (Zembylas, 2014, p. 16). Critical hope is more like “what is needed to transform social reality and to imagine possible futures” (Bourn & Tarozzi, 2024, p. 1). Addressing equalities should take into account the connection between individuals, education systems and the broader social structures that shape, maintain and reflect it. The critical hope under the social justice umbrella theme calls on teachers to “identify cracks in dominant social structures and ideologies” (Webb, 2017, p. 555) and create “a different lifeworld” (Zembylas, 2014, p. 13) whether through imaginative or practical means, where their potential to drive change and dismantle inequitable systems through CoP participation remains steadfast. Consequently, this concept will be mapped into the model to understand power relations and inequalities within and beyond CoP context. This proposed conceptual framework helps address the research questions:

• How are CoPs in schools in Pakistan established?

• How can women teachers perceive and address invisible challenges in Pakistani education through CoPs?

Bush fires are extraordinarily dangerous and possess precarious capacity for growth and destruction. Driven by changeable winds, bushfires devour, transform, and territorialise. In the immediate period after fires school communities swing into actions of care and recovery. Crisis leadership plays a critical role in navigating the aftermath of these devastating events that causes catastrophic harm and leave long-lasting impacts on communities (Striepe & Cunningham, 2021).Leadership from a posthuman perspective reworks notions of solely human agency as more-than-human relations between human and non-human bodies produces distributed subjectivity (Fairchild, 2019). Moreover, ‘selves’ are not individual subjects, but are collective enunciations that are produced through the processes and movements with assemblages (Strom & Lupinacci, 2019).

The more-than-human entanglement of fire, schools, communities, wildlife, and the anthropogenic landscape provoke a challenging debate around ethics of care. This study embraces critical posthumanism, which challenges the traditional centrism of the human in ethical discourse (Taylor, 2018). Specifically the aftermath of bushfires are examined through the lenses of affect and ethico-onto-epistemology. Ethical considerations during crisis leadership are reframed as an interplay of relationships, engagements, and entanglements, emphasising material interactions that encompass more than just human actors. The engagement of posthuman concepts enable ethical and political affordances that fracture binary dualisms and discourses. (Fairchild, 2019). Drawing on new materialism we conceptualise the post- bushfire aftermath as spaces for ethico-onto-epistemological mattering. The physical devastation and recovery are inextricably linked to ethical, ontological, and epistemological dimensions.

Ethico- onto-espitemology foregrounds the moral dimensions of our interactions with the world (Barad, 2007). Ethics are immanent so that ethical considerations are not external to us but arise from relations. Therefore ethics, ontology, and epistemology are not separate domains but are deeply intertwined, with our ethical decisions (ethico-) are influenced by our understanding of being (onto-) and our knowledge (epistemology) (Geerts & Carstens, 2019). In short, our way of knowing the world is shaped by our ethical positions and our ontological understandings

In the aftermath of fires, the challenges are shaped by uncertainty and moving frontiers (Drysdale & Gurr, 2017; Mutch, 2015; Smith & Riley, 2012). As Bozalek suggests “research is a matter of opening possibilities and immersion in the indeterminancy of the world, which is never settled. It is about being aware of how one part of the world makes itself intelligible to another part of the world and what matters in the flourishing of the world, where politics, ethics, ontology and epistemology are intertwined” (2021, 147). At every step the affective encounter is new and different; and unknown. “Affect is a material encounter where we change in relation to an experience” (Hickey-Moody, 2009).

This research into school leadership during such crises addresses the nexus between destruction and regeneration. Bushfires are more than freely occurring natural disasters; they are active agents that reshape landscapes, lives, and communities. They challenge a traditional human-centered perspective of leadership and crisis management by highlighting the significant role of non-human elements in these scenarios. The immediate actions of care and recovery in school communities post-bushfires, as observed by Striepe & Cunningham (2021), demonstrate a collective, emergent response, transcending individual human efforts. This collective response is a manifestation of Fairchild's (2019) concept of distributed subjectivity, where the agency is not just a human attribute but a product of the interplay between humans, nature, and the environment. The catastrophic impact of bushfires necessitates a leadership approach that acknowledges this interconnectedness.

The environmental performance of the Republic of Serbia is unsatisfactory, and the consequences of environmental degradation reflect on the population's health and quality of life. Taking into account that children and young people are future decision-makers, it is necessary to provide them with an opportunity to acquire knowledge, skills, and develop attitudes that will help them to act in environmentally responsible way, both locally and globally. This paper is part of the ELIPS project which aims to investigate environmental literacy (EL) and the environmental identity among the 7th grade students in Serbia. EL is operationalized comprehensively, encompassing four components: (1) knowledge, (2) affect, (3) cognitive skills, and (4) behavior (Marcinkowski, 1991, 2004; McBeth et al., 2008; Wilke, 1995). The testing of EL among elementary school students was conducted in several countries around the world applying an international instrument for determining the level of environmental literacy, the Middle School Environmental Literacy Survey (MSELS) (McBeth et al., 2008). In the USA, EL was tested on a sample of sixth-graders (age 11-12) and the eighth-graders (age 13-14). The total EL score on a total sample was 144.83 (out of 240) (McBeth et al., 2008). As far as separate EL components are concerned, the students from the USA achieved the following results: knowledge – 40.34; affect – 38.05; cognitive skills – 25.56, and 36.84 for behavior. Students from Thessaloniki (Greece), age12-15, had a total score of 123.31 (Nastoulas et al., 2017). The scores for EL components for the students from Thessaloniki were: knowledge – 35.18; affect – 35.43; cognitive skills – 17.2, and 36.5 for behavior.
In the context of local and global environmental issues, as well as the obligations of Serbia stemming from signing international (UN) documents related to the environment and environmental education, the early 21st century marked the beginning of the implementation of the goals of this concept in the educational system. Regarding elementary education, which is divided into two cycles in Serbia (the first cycle – students of age 7-10; the second cycle – students of age 11-15), these goals were implemented in some compulsory school subjects from the field of science (biology, chemistry, etc.), and in the curricula of some elective subjects. This was the case with the elective subject Guardians of Nature (GN) which was introduced in 2004. It was in the list of electives in the first six grades until 2018, when its status was formally changed and it became an optional activity. Nevertheless, its status essentially remained the same, provided that it is offered by a school which, in turn, is obligated to offer three elective subjects/optional activities in every grade and students are free to choose GN according to their interests. The subject/activity GN, though not compulsory for all students, is significant for our research because its goals/outcomes are focused on developing all EL components and the recommended contents encompass all topics related to the environment and the role of people in its degradation and preservation. In some research, the curricula are linked to the EL level of students. For example, the positive effects of the elective subjects pertaining to environmental education on the EL levels of students in the USA (North Carolina), age 11-14, were identified, especially in the domain of cognitive skills (Stevenson et al., 2013). Taking everything above-mentioned into account, we decided to investigate, apart from the EL of students of age 14, whether there is a connection between attending GN classes and the level of the EL components acquired.

According to the Environmental Performance Index that estimates climate change performance, environmental health and ecosystem vitality, Serbia takes rank 79 out of 180 countries (Wolf et al., 2022). Environmentally irresponsible behavior in Serbia is demonstrated both at the individual and institutional level (uncontrolled crops burning, lack of waste water treatment, using low quality coal and oil derivatives for power plants and individual heating systems, unsanitary landfills, massive deforestation etc.) and requests urgent changes of practice and finding solutions. Several authors underline the role of environmental education in raising awareness and changing behavior of young generations (Coyle, 2005). The main goal of environmental education is creating environmentally literate citizens, capable for lifelong learning (Coyle, 2005). “The environmentally literate citizen, let us imagine, will have a blend of ecological sensitivity, moral maturity and informed awareness of natural processes that would make her or him unlikely to contribute to further degradation of natural processes at either individual or corporate levels. This is an ideal, for it would never be expected that all citizens could really attain such competence” (Brennan, 1994: 5).
The concept of the environmental literacy has been widely theoretically used and empirically tested (Marcinkowski & Reid, 2019; Negev, et al., 2008; Nastoulas, Marini &Skanavis, 2017). According to Simmons (1995), Wilke (1995), and others (e.g., McBride et al. 2013), environmental literacy encompasses: ecological and environmental knowledge, awareness of environmental problems, cognitive skills for analyzing environmental problems as well as proposed solutions or actions, and manifesting pro-ecological behavior which, all together, can help decrease environmental impact and increase participation in social activities intended to protect the environment at the individual and household levels (Negev, et al., 2008; Stern, 2000). Our study relies on the methodological framework developed for the purpose of national testing of environmental literacy in the USA (McBeth et al., 2008) that measures environmental literacy through four components and their subcomponents: (1) ecological knowledge, (2) environmental affect (verbal commitment, environmental sensitivity and environmental feelings), (3) actual commitment (pro-environmental behavior) and (4) cognitive skills (identification of environmental problems, analysis of the environmental problems and action planning). The study is a result of the project Environmental Identity of Primary School Students in Serbia, which aims to investigate environmental literacy and the environmental identity among the students of final grades of primary school (13-15 years old). The purpose of this paper was to summarize the results of analyses which sought to determine whether the components of ecological knowledge, environmental affect and cognitive skills could predict pro-environmental behavior of the students.

This is an empirical design study on Education for sustainable development (ESD) that will be presented in an early stage with preliminary result at the ECER conference 2024.

School leaders and teachers play a central role in ensuring that all students acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote a sustainable society (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2020). Education for sustainable development (ESD) is a complex and transdisciplinary task for schools and can therefore not be treated as a separate subject but more likely is called for to integrate into all education activities (Holst 2022). In this very urgent task, school leaders and teachers are often left alone without systematic organizational structures and guidelines for implementing ESD. More knowledge and support to both practice and policy decision making is needed.

There is a growing amount of research on ESD implementation. Most studies are small-scale studies where single levels, subjects, or functions in education have been studied to identify their support functions in implementing ESD effectively at schools (Verhelst 2021). Although it is known that the school organization is vital in supporting daily teaching practice in general (Jarl et al., 2021), there is a lack of studies of how a school organization can support the implementation of ESD (see however Forssten Seiser et al., 2022; Mogren 2019), and how multiple actors in a school organization (e.g., leaders, teachers, and students) covary in this implementation. Especially holistic large-scale studies that enable generalizations are missing (Verhelst, 2021). 

We have, based on knowledge from previous small-scale studies about ESD at individual and organizational levels and a school improvement project in one Swedish municipality, designed a large-scale national ESD study, including school leaders, teachers, and students. Organizational support, structures, and visions for school leaders will be related to visions, work, and needs related to ESD expressed by teachers and reflections from the students. An already existing national database that is unique in its size for ESD will form the basis for the study. Throughout the project we will build on and further develop the concept of a whole school approach in ESD (Wals & Mathie, 2022). The whole school approach to ESD is a concept that is used to study ESD implementation through a lens of general school improvement as part of daily practice. It aims to reveal how the school organization can support ESD implementation, structurally and coherently. 

The aim of our project is to develop systematic and generalized guidelines for how the school organization can support the implementation of ESD. We will study how school leaders organize education and how teachers and students are framed by their local school organizations in their work with ESD. Our first research question is: 

 

How do Swedish school leaders and teachers from preschool, compulsory and secondary school describe their visions, current work, and needs related to ESD, both individual and in relation to their school leaders and their school organizations?

This research question is the start of an iterative research process where factors on school leader level that are supportive for the teachers’ work will be investigated. Further student descriptions of ESD related to school leaders and teachers understanding of ESD will be investigated. Generated knowledge will contribute to how a concept of a whole school approach to ESD, including school leaders, teachers, and students can be further developed to better describe the effects of the school organization for the implementation of ESD in schools? 

Nationally, this large-scale holistic project will support policy decisions for a wide national implementation of ESD. Theoretically, the project will contribute to further conceptualization and development of the whole school approach in ESD.

Climate change continues to be a priority on the international agenda. However, stakeholders in the education sector in Kazakhstan have an inadequate understanding of education's part in the climate change initiative and what addressing climate change through education entails. This study investigates the integration of sustainable and holistic pedagogy in Chemistry classrooms. The proposed research design for this study is the convergent mixed-method design, and the participants (n=40) will be Chemistry teachers from Nazarbayev Intellectual School. The expected outcome is that Chemistry teachers are unfamiliar with Green Chemistry principles. The implications of the findings provide a foundation for educationalists to improve curriculum development toward environmental protection.

Kazakhstan faces many environmental issues because of the increase in the volume of waste, natural disasters, land degradation (water, wind), deficiency of water resources, air pollution, greenhouse gases, and technological innovations. It necessitates immediate and pragmatic approaches in Chemistry education. According to the United Nations (2022), education is an indispensable resource in the campaign against climate change. It inspires individuals to change their behaviours and attitudes and make informed decisions crucial in the fight against climate change and related environmental problems (Moseley et al., 2019). Leal and Hemstock (2019) also noted that education as a process helps young people better understand and address the effects of global warming. It also fosters better behaviours and attitudes to support the initiatives towards the fight against climate change and embracing a changing environment.

Stakeholders in the education sector in Kazakhstan have an inadequate understanding of education's part in the climate change initiative and what addressing climate change through education entails (Mochizuki & Bryan, 2015). Embracing sustainable Chemistry education is proposed as a viable solution to involve education in the fight against climate change actively. This study focuses on Green Chemistry, a form of sustainable Chemistry education that embraces the need to prepare students for environment-friendly knowledge critical to solving societal problems while protecting the environment. Therefore, there is a need to provide adequate knowledge of Green Chemistry for every Chemistry teacher in Kazakhstan.

Even though education's role in addressing climate change challenges is increasingly acknowledged, the education system remains underutilised as a strategic tool to adapt and mitigate climate change. Educationalists in most countries globally, including Kazakhstan, are yet to formulate a coherent model for climate change education (Mochizuki & Bryan, 2015). It raises the need to research the integration of sustainable and holistic pedagogy in Chemistry classrooms to develop responsible citizens who apply Green Chemistry principles to solve persistent environmental issues. Integrating environmental education has improved our understanding of handling impurities and their effects. Nevertheless, the extent of incorporation in the science curriculum is not widely known in Kazakhstan (Suyundikova, 2019). Nazarbayev Intellectual School (NIS) aims to introduce a Sustainable Curriculum to close this gap by investigating the integration of holistic and sustainable pedagogy in Chemistry classrooms (Suyundikova, 2019). This study investigates the integration of sustainable and holistic pedagogy in Chemistry classrooms.

It will address the following research questions:

1. What are the perceptions of high school chemistry teachers in Kazakhstan regarding green chemistry education?
2. What is the level of knowledge of high school chemistry teachers in Kazakhstan about green chemistry education?
3. What are the main challenges faced by high school chemistry teachers in Kazakhstan when implementing green chemistry education in the classroom?
4. Based on the findings, what recommendations can be made to improve green chemistry education for high school chemistry teachers in Kazakhstan?

One of the main aims of environmental education is to support people in realising pro-environmental behaviours (PEB). Previous literature has revealed that gender and environmental attitudes are important factors concerning people's pro-environmental behaviours. In our presentation, recent findings from a representative sample of Hungarian high school students' data regarding the relationship between environmental attitudes, gender and pro-environmental behaviours are presented.

Environmental attitudes represent individuals' value judgments concerning the natural environment (Hawcroft & Milfort, 2010). Environmental attitudes can be categorised into two main paradigms: the Dominant Social Paradigm (DSP), which suggests that the environment should be subordinate to human needs, and the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP), which emphasises environmental protection against human activities (Dunlap et al., 2000). Dunlap and colleagues’ (2000) revised NEP scale for measuring environmental attitudes has been criticised extensively recently for its psychometry and content (Hawcroft & Milfort, 2010; Berze et al., 2022).

Gender differences in environmental attitudes and environmentally conscious behaviours are widely studied (De Leeuw et al., 2014). Several studies indicate that women and girls have higher environmental attitudes and engage in more environmentally conscious actions, although conflicting results exist.

The conceptual framework of our presentation is built upon the basis of two important models explaining environmentally conscious behaviour. The Value-Belief-Norm model (Stern & Dietz, 1994; Klöckner, 2013) and the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1991) both propose that the antecedents of pro-environmental behaviour - among other factors - are environmental attitudes.

The causes of these differences are theorised to lie mainly in socialisation and living conditions. For example, significant differences are found for environmental actions in the private sphere but not for public actions (Handler & Haller, 2011; Xiao & Dunlap, 2007) - a difference that can be explained in several ways. Regarding accessibility, there may also be an indirect effect of women spending more time running the household and thus being faced with more choices to act in an environmentally responsible way (Molina, 2018). Socialisation differences are closely related to this, as society tries to impart different values to girls and boys through upbringing. The former are raised to be supportive and caring. In contrast, boys are raised with a greater emphasis on responsible and rational behaviour. They are more encouraged to be proactive (Blocker & Eckberg, 1997) - which may lead them to interpret differently the social circumstances, losses and gains that proactive actions can potentially provide - and therefore, proactive actions in the public sphere are stereotyped as being more likely to be attributed to men (Dietz et al., 1998; Molina, 2018).

Our research objectives:

1) Exploring the direction and strength of the relationship between students' gender and pro-environmental behaviours.

2) Exploring the direction and strength of the relationship between students' environmental attitudes and pro-environmental behaviours and whether these attitudes mediate the gender-PEB relationship .

3) Comparing our used version of the NEP and an alternative version of the 2-MEV scales by their direct effects on pro-environmental behaviour in our model.

Monitoring and reporting mechanisms are highlighted in many regional and policy documents as critical for demonstrating the progress that has been achieved in education at both national and regional levels. Such reporting provides data and information regarding the gaps and support needed to promote necessary reforms for the improvement of education and training systems (EU 2021, p.4; 2023, par.17).

In the field of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) monitoring and reporting provide strategic insights for governments and policymakers to help accelerate progress (Unesco, 2016), target holistic ESD implementation (Holst et al., 2020) and identify successes and challenges for implementing ESD at national and regional levels (Hadjiachilleos & Zachariou, 2022).

National and regional policy frameworks, guidelines, and monitoring mechanisms form the ‘spine’ of ESD implementation across diverse educational contexts, assigning responsibility and accountability to relevant stakeholders across different levels of government (Glass and Newig, 2019). Several international efforts have been developed to monitor progress on ESD (Unesco 2015; UNECE 2009); however, these efforts also highlight various challenges and weaknesses in the monitoring and reporting process, primarily connected to the difficulty of ensuring effective stakeholder engagement.

Achieving comprehensive monitoring and insightful reporting on ESD is necessary "to break down silos and build cross-sector collaboration that contributes to a shared vision on system-level policy interventions and monitoring" (Unesco 2016, p.16). Various studies on ESD underscore the importance of stakeholder engagement and collaborative partnerships. Such collaboration can increase the identification of existing gaps, support the continual review of implementation and practice, ensure the ongoing relevance and effectiveness of ESD efforts and enhance understanding of ESD progress thereby inspiring and building knowledge among stakeholders at both national and regional levels (Didham and Ofey 2012; Tilbury 2007). Despite extensive discussion, examples of regional reporting mechanisms reveal little attention being given to facilitating collaborative, multi-stakeholder partnerships for co-investigation and knowledge exchange at the research-policy interface (Didham and Ofey Manu, 2020) in relation to monitoring and reporting.

The current study focuses on the example of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) ESD Strategy implementation, which is perhaps the most concrete process developed to support countries in developing national plans and policies for integrating ESD across their education systems in a collaborative manner (UNECE, 2005). The UNECE region includes 56 Member States and its ESD Strategy, which is integrated internationally and nationally, serves as a peer learning mechanism. It is the only such strategy that is accompanied by a comprehensive assessment framework based on multi-stakeholder collaboration for reporting.

Since the establishment of the Strategy in 2005, it has completed three reporting cycles. These have identified the significant successes and challenges involved in the Strategy’s implementation at the national level and have provided an overview of ESD in the region, capturing ESD holistically. It offers the international community concrete examples of ESD policy, practice and research providing insights on how reporting can fill gaps in policies and vice versa.

As a fourth cycle of reporting against the UNECE ESD Strategy concludes, this study explores the following questions:

- Which stakeholders need to be engaged in the ESD reporting process, and how are they being identified?

- What challenges have emerged in expanding stakeholder engagement in reporting, and how might these be overcome?

- What are the roles that different stakeholders play in reporting and might these expand?

- Who determines what gets reported and how is this agreed?

The paper presents a qualitative study on education in Germany in the field of soil health, which includes a focus group discussion and interviews. Soil health can be understood as “the continued capacity of soils to support ecosystem services” (European Commission, undated). Past analyses by Belek et al. (2019) have shown that numerous and diverse events are taking place on the ground in Germany for the communication of soil-related issues. Yet, there is still insufficient awareness of the topic in public perception and in media reporting. Accordingly, the complex topic of soil remains to date not well presented, especially for people who are not soil experts. New approaches for soil science education and awarness raising are necessary (Brevik, 2022).

This study complements parallel secondary research and participatory activities that involve experts in a newly established network of a community of practice at country level as well as on an European level. It aims to identify the experiences, training needs and teaching requirements of participants on soil health education by answering the twofold general research question, what the state of soil health awareness education is and what the wishes for future soil health awareness education are. Findings in this qualitative study will be triangulated with findings provided by a desk research on soil health education, focusing on teaching and learning offers, policy documents, scientific literature as well as grey literature and various kinds of media formats.

At a later stage, the results of studies in 14 other countries in Europe based on the same research design will be combined and further analyzed in order to further develop educational concepts and materials for the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors, including VET and also addressing the general public, so that the importance of soils can be better understood on a broad scale and their protection can be increased more effectively.

Soil is a very basic, vital component of the natural environment. Countless, predominantly microscopic creatures find their habitat in the soil. They influence the composition of the soil and its fertility and keep the global carbon cycle going. Soils store the greenhouse gas CO2 to a greater extent than the world's forests. Through their storage function, they regulate the availability of water and purify it at the same time. Without intact soils, humans lack the basis for their nutrition and health. However, the soil is under enormous threat, and with it the ecosystem services it provides (Baer and Birgé, 2018). The high proportion of sealed surfaces, which has increased year on year, threatens biodiversity. 60% of European soils are considered to be damaged and the harmful effects associated with industrial agriculture continue to exacerbate the situation. Together with global warming, this is the reason why desertification is also taking place in Europe. (Luig, 2024). To draw attention to the need to protect and restore soils and promote sustainable management practices in urban and rural areas, the European Union (2023) has launched the initiative 'A Soil Deal for Europe' (Mission Soil). Its aim is to raise awareness and to help ensure the long-term health and productivity of soils of all types. The mission also promotes the exchange of knowledge with interest groups and the general public. Specifically, the Soil Mission focuses on sustainable practices in the areas of land use planning, soil conservation and agricultural techniques that rely less on the use of chemical inputs.

Introduction

Outdoor education and outdoor play and learning has a long-standing heritage. Based on a desire to engage learners experientially through structured and unstructured activities, and via reflection on “learning by doing” (Dewey, 1915, p255). Distinctively, the affordances of the outdoor environment are seen to enhance opportunities for learning in ways that are interdisciplinary, authentically felt, ‘hands-on’, ‘place-based’ and connected to local contexts (Beames and Brown, 2016; Lloyd, Truong and Gray, 2018). Of late, concerns around young people’s wellbeing, and the need for an educational response to issues around sustainability, climate change and biodiversity loss, have led to renewed emphasis on provision for outdoor learning. However, internationally, little is known about the durations and locations of this provision, how prepared teachers are to facilitate these, and how countries compare in this regard.

Few countries worldwide have much in the way of empirical evidence of the extent of provision of education in outdoor settings at school and pre-school levels. Exceptions include Canada (see Asfeldt et al. 2020), Hungary (Fuz 2018), England (Prince, 2019). In New Zealand, Hill et al (2020) (basing some of their protocols on the survey reported upon herein) revealed ‘education outside the classroom’ was mostly teacher led and focused on curricular enhancement. In Denmark, for example, Barfod et al. (2021) looked back at multiple surveys in Denmark wherein school leaders reported on outdoor schooling across three time points (2007, 2014, 2019) helping them discern the regularity of grassroots udeskole provision.. In Scotland, Beames and Polack (2019) reviewed inspection reports (2011 – 2018) to show that outdoor learning in ‘grounds, local green space or local community during school hours’ appeared in ¾ of primary schools’ inspections providing another way to capture evidence of the extent of provision. Internationally, each survey team have sought to capture evidence on curricular-linked outdoor learning using approaches that mostly differ. These differences make international comparison difficult.

This paper will describe research which empirically measured outdoor provision in Scotland and in Rimini, Italy using the same methodological approach. This enables international comparisons to be made and sharing of practice across the two countries.

Findings

The evidence presented here indicates there is value and need for an approach to surveying outdoor educational provision in a national and international context. The Scottish survey data provide a valuable, evidence-based measure of provision that counters popular opinion and others’ assessment of prevalence of outdoor learning provision in Scotland. Firstly, post-Covid, over half of the teachers in our survey held the perception that provision outdoors had increased compared to pre-pandemic levels. This of course might have been true, adding weight to the possibility of a sustained decline between 2014 and 2022. Secondly, the survey findings also counter the perspective offered by the HMIE report (HMIE, 2022) for the same year which suggested outdoor provision was an increasing feature, and that the pandemic had ‘accelerated the breadth and depth of provision’ (though for their exemplification cases this may have been true). Our survey showed the early years sector did increase provision but our this did not hold true on average for most of our randomly sampled schools. The Italian survey data found that the impact of the pandemic had an even greater perceived impact on outdoor provision, with ¾ of practitioners across Kindergarten and Primary school settings identifying an increase. The ability to compare educators’ perceptions with the reality of provision, across settings and indeed across countries going forward, is an important step in understanding the motivators towards increased outdoor provision.

Contemporary research affirms that we will soon arrive at the point of irreconcilable ecological breakdown. Yet today’s mainstream Environmental Education (EE) research focuses on economic growth with an inattention to the systemic causes of social and environmental injustices. The impact of (mis)education on environmental justice can be profoundly transformative, affecting the well-being and economic prospects of affected social groups. These impacts can be immediate and violent such as factory waste spills in low-income areas, or subtler, overlooked forms of slow violence that go unnoticed for long periods of time (Nixon, 2011). This slow violence is often overlooked because the critical lens of environmental justice is not yet widely applied in the public arena. Education for Environmental Justice is thus confronted with challenging habitual modes of epistemic and methodological approaches to research (Stein, 2019).

The EEJ Reading and Research Collective approaches scholarly thinking through justice-oriented art-making practices and identifies themes in education and environmental justice to co-create research. The collective includes artists who respond to the research, either to further develop, re-interpret, or communicate what the readings and discussions elided and erased. Collaboratively, we interpret the links between art and readings as an ongoing process of research-as-creation. An key objective of this collective is to build a supportive community of early career and established researchers, which we recognise as critical to the sustainability of our collective futures. This proposed symposium engages the interplays between environmental justice and education. We will both explain our methods as a research group and share the way our individual studies connect environmental justice and education. In doing so, the symposium will increase understanding of education's role in establishing (and suppressing) environmental justice in civil society sectors transnationally.

We begin by summarising the ongoing literature review work of the collective emerging from our arts-based practice, then move into individual presentations showcasing the diversity of our work in environmental justice and education. Haley Perkins and Sarah Sharp will open the presentations by proposing that global environmental justice begins with epistemic justice. Using new-materialist philosophies of entanglement and relationality, they make a case for engaging with participatory creative activities using arts-based methods to enact a more just onto-epistemological shift towards sustainability. Next, Shingirayi Kandi and Ceri Holman engage UK-based youth perspectives. Kandi’s presentation will explore the effects, benefits, and challenges of outdoor learning in special schools for pupils with Complex, Severe, Profound, and Multiple Learning Disabilities (CSPMLD), and his ongoing research in primary special schools. Holman’s deliberative place-based pedagogy explores the tensions in Cumbria, England, among fossil fuel interests and the voices of young people in the community. She explores students’ learning and agency through relational positionality. Finally, Rosalie Mathie, based in Norway, will discuss the role of co-creative research methods for environmental justice-oriented education. A collection of examples are brought forward that encourage proactive participant engagement and co-development within academic and educational settings. Our discussant, Maria-Angelika Caceras (recently based in France, but with a history of working in Brazil), will comment on the submissions from the point of view of Indigenous epistemologies.

The long-term ambition of EEJ is to contribute to transforming education across multiple levels to address the burgeoning and socioeconomically differentiated problems arising from the impacts of what is (problematically) termed the Anthropocene. We hope that by sharing the mission and approach of the EEJ Reading and Research Collective, we can engage with a wider audience and explore the possibilities of such a practice while communicating the urgency of the messages that emerge from the interleaving of questions of environmental justice, art, and education.

This presentation begins by emphasising that Environmental Justice (EJ) in education begins with epistemic justice. Most Environmental Education (EE) in Europe is predominantly focused on scientific knowledge transmission about climate change and conservation. It perpetuates ideas of human exceptionalism by separating human activity from ‘nature’ by teaching about the environment rather than acknowledging how we live within it (Dunlop & Rushton, 2022b), resulting in inadequate pedagogic practices to address the challenges of the current ecological crisis (Taylor et al., 2020). Thus, we highlight the need for diversity in educational and research methods, focusing on international and intersectional views of EJ centred on challenging dominant narratives, power structures, and knowledge systems that perpetuate environmental injustices across the world, and within education (Zembylas, 2018). This presentation links issues of environmental (in)justice to the dominating epistemologies of the Global North, which are extensions of ongoing colonial practices that justify the exploitation of both people and nature and exclude different knowledge systems (Silva, 2014). We approach this provocation by first summarising the preliminary findings from ongoing literature review work, informed by critical hermeneutic (Habermas, 1971) and decolonial frameworks (Collins, 2019; Maldonado-Torres, 2007). We will identify both the broad assumptions within contemporary EE practices in the Global North and nuances or gaps that are often overlooked in standard literature reviews. Next, we discuss the implications of these findings on education for environmental justice, and highlight identified openings for future transformative action in EE. We then focus on one such opening for approaching epistemic justice in education, grounded in decolonial and feminist new-materialist philosophies of entanglement and relationality. Understanding ourselves as entangled entities, deconstructing human exceptionalism, and resisting anthropocentric philosophies which implicitly justify the exploitation and destruction of multi-species ecologies, could help us reimagine education within a changing world (Haraway, 2016). We demonstrate an example of pedagogy for epistemic justice that explores participatory creative activities using arts-based methods. This example proposes that creating stories with/in our local environments can intertwine physical landscapes with remembered and imagined ones to foster an understanding of entanglement. We will outline experiences of participating in mixed-media story-making as a way to understand ourselves as ‘entangled’ within the world in its affective state of becoming - knowing that our actions and futures are constantly engaged in relation with all else. This presentation will therefore contribute a proposal for beyond-anthropocentric pedagogies to enact the urgent onto-epistemological shift towards learning to live sustainability.

Collins, P. H. (2019). Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory. Duke University Press. Durham, NC. Dunlop, & Rushton, E. A. C. (2022). Putting climate change at the heart of education: Is England's strategy a placebo for policy? British Educational Research Journal, 48(6), 1083–1101. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3816 Habermas, J. (1971). Knowledge and Human Interests (Vol. 114). Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble. Duke University Press. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On the Coloniality of Being. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 240–270. Silva, D.F.D.. (2014). Toward a Black Feminist Poethics: The Quest(ion) of Blackness Toward the End of the World. The Black Scholar, 44(2), 81–97. Taylor, A., Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., Blaise, M., & Silova, I. (2020). Learning to become with the world: Education for future survival. Common Worlds Research Collective. Paper commissioned for the UNESCO Futures of Education report. Zembylas. (2018). Decolonial possibilities in South African higher education : reconfiguring humanising pedagogies as/with decolonising pedagogies. South African Journal of Education, 38(4), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v38n4a1699

Recently, there has been significant development in inclusive mainstream research (Hong et al., 2020), with individuals with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) not only involved in the research as participants but as researchers themselves too; however, little is still known about pupils with Complex Severe Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities (CSPMLD) who face a variety of additional learning challenges (de Haas et al., 2022 and require bespoke educational approaches, and outdoor learning is emerging as a potent methodology (Buli-Holmberg and Jeyaprathaban, 2016). The increasing importance of outdoor learning (OL) has been met with a myriad of studies extolling its benefits (Pierce and Maher, 2019; Prince and Diggory, 2023; Mann et al., 2021; Sekhri, 2019). Hence, I plan to explore the effects, benefits, and challenges, of OL in special schools for pupils with CSPMLD and the experiences of stakeholders involved. In their contribution, Sutherland and Legge (2016) state OL essentially occurs outdoors, as such, issues of environmental justice emerge with the use of the external environment to achieve OL. For example, how are the varying needs of CPSMLD students considered when designing and delivering OL? What are the injustices that emerge when we consider CPSMLD students in the outdoors? My systematic literature reviews that in the context of special schools, OL in CSPMLD is still understudied especially in England, warranting more studies to be done in this area (Guardino, 2019). I plan to conduct case studies (Yazan, 2015) on two selected special schools. In these schools, I intend to conduct semi-structured interviews with school staff and parents/guardians/carers and participatory observations on pupils with CSPMLD. Then analyse the data drawing from Braun and Clarke (2006) thematic analysis. I will put my findings into the context of wider Europe, to show how special schools in England contrast and compare with CPSMLD education strategies in other parts of Europe.

Buli-Holmberg, J., & Jeyaprathaban, S. (2016). Effective Practice in Inclusive and Special Needs Education. International Journal of Special Education, 31(1), 119–134. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1099986 de Haas, C., Grace, J., Hope, J., & Nind, M. (2022). Doing Research Inclusively: Understanding What It Means to Do Research with and Alongside People with Profound Intellectual Disabilities. Social Sciences, 11(4), 159. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11040159 Guardino, C., Hall, K. W., Largo-Wight, E., & Hubbuch, C. (2019). Teacher and student perceptions of an outdoor classroom. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 22(2), 113–126. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42322-019-00033-7 Hong, S.-Y., Eum, J., Long, Y., Wu, C., & Welch, G. (2020). Typically Developing Preschoolers’ Behavior Toward Peers With Disabilities in Inclusive Classroom Contexts. Journal of Early Intervention, 42(1), 49–68. https://doi.org/10.1177/1053815119873071 Mann, J., Gray, T., Truong, S., Sahlberg, P., Bentsen, P., Passy, R., Ho, S., Ward, K., & Cowper, R. (2021). A Systematic Review Protocol to Identify the Key Benefits and Efficacy of Nature-Based Learning in Outdoor Educational Settings. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(3), 1199. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18031199 Pierce, S., & Maher, A. J. (2020). Physical activity among children and young people with intellectual disabilities in special schools: Teacher and learning support assistant perceptions. British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 48(1), 37–44. https://doi.org/10.1111/bld.12301

Socio-political action is insufficient for the climate crisis, partly due to its complexity and hegemonic norms. Young people’s futures will be especially impacted. Youth democratic engagement is often overlooked, despite the human right to express opinions and participate in political decision-making that affects them (UNCRC, 1989). The English school curriculum’s focus on subject mastery and assessment limits opportunities to learn extensively about climate, environmental and social justice, hindering more transformative learning and empowered engagement. In his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969) Buckminster Fuller asked who should take responsibility for safeguarding the planet beyond countries’ individualistic ambitions. Recognising the twin impediments to cohesive governance of failing democracies (including lack of trust in governments and rising populism) and inadequate climate action, Willis (2020) suggests trying deliberative democracy. Ordinary people could help pilot Spaceship Earth. Increasingly, consensual decision-making on controversial subjects is being reached using citizens’ assemblies and juries, providing leaders with a clear mandate to act. Could deliberative pedagogy similarly support young people’s learning, skills, and agency? This study introduces a local case study to school students (11- to 14-years-old) in Cumbria, England. Here the UK’s first deep coalmine for 30 years has been approved. Provoking vigorous public debate, it reveals pluralist perspectives on fossil fuels that embody economic, political, environmental, social, and cultural interests. Despite local, national, and global attention, young people have no forum in which to debate the coalmine’s meaning for them, their community, and futures. Using place-based deliberative pedagogy, students explore their relational positionality by analysing key narratives around the mine, collaborating on a review and recommendations for decision-makers. Through a capability approach lens, the research explores young people’s learning and agency as local and global citizens – or pilots. The implications of this approach within the wider European context will be discussed.

Buckminster Fuller, R. (1969). Operating manual for spaceship earth. New York: EP Dutton. Willis, R. (2020). Too hot to handle? The democratic challenge of climate change. Bristol: Bristol University Press.

Today, where environmental and social inequalities are prevalent globally, and the call for decolonising academia leads to pertinent ethical questioning, for example, questioning the inequalities and inequities that arise in research processes (Sempere, Aliyu, & Bollaert, 2022), the role creative and co-developed methods can take to ensure multiple voices are heard is of interest. There is a long history of creative and artistic methods in academia and education, however the Arts and Sciences still for many are divided, or in some cases, science is misusing art: “[…] to promote its hard-sell, to offer images that beautify its results, soften its impact and mask its collusion with corporations whose only interest in research is that it should ‘drive innovation’ (Ingold, 2018, p225). The role art has in education is also being interrogated, such as Biesta (2020) questioning the expressivist and instrumentalist ways art education can be practised that fall short of what he describes as being the ‘real educational work’, which he describes as “[..] bringing children and young people into dialogue with the world” (Biesta, 2020, p117). Research that takes an active role in and for environmental justice can quickly lead us to question our responsibility as researchers. With this questioning comes the requirement, as Ingold (2018) critiques, for academic pursuit to ensure that the role of science as an ‘exporter of knowledge’, does not eclipse our societal duty of care and responsibility. This also demands us to understand why research is often done ‘on’ instead of ‘with’ participants, and within this understand in what context this is and is not appropriate. With methodological roots in Action Research (Townsend, 2019) and Educational Design Research (McKenny & Reeves (2019), this presentation collates creative 'participatory' methods (such as Digital Stories, Artivisim, Photovoice, Community mapping and Visual-timelines), found in both educational and research contexts, that seek to engage participants as co-developers of research: Examples from Art Education (Duncum, 2017), Photovoice projects such as Harper et al (2017), Partners in Science from Willyard, Scudellari, and Nordling (2018), and Rodríguez-Labajos (2022) Artistic Activism literature synthesis, are presented to ignite reflection on ways to enable participants to take on proactive and empowered roles within research. From this the future of research concerning EEJ is critiqued and concludes by calling for the role of co-creative and co-developed methods in academia to not be underestimated.

Biesta, G. (2020). Letting Art Teach: Art Education ‘after’Joseph Beuys Arnhem, The Netherlands. Duncum, P. (2017). Engaging public space: Art education pedagogies for social justice. Social Justice and the Arts, 61-76. Harper, K., Sands, C., Angarita Horowitz, D., Totman, M., Maitín, M., Rosado, J. S., ... & Alger, N. (2017). Food justice youth development: using Photovoice to study urban school food systems. Local Environment, 22(7), 791-808. Ingold, T. (2018). From science to art and back again: The pendulum of an anthropologist. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 43(3-4), 213-227. McKenney, S., & Reeves, T. (2018). Conducting Educational Design Research: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Sempere, M. J. C., Aliyu, T., & Bollaert, C. (2022). Towards decolonising research ethics: from one-off review boards to decentralised north–south partnerships in an International Development Programme. Education Sciences, 12(4), 236. Townsend, A. (2019). Who does action research and what responsibilities do they have to others?, Educational Action Research, 27:2, 149-151, DOI: 10.1080/09650792.2019.1582184 Rodríguez-Labajos, B. (2022). Artistic activism promotes three major forms of sustainability transformation. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 57, 101199. Willyard, C., Scudellari, M., and Nordling, L., Partners in Science. Nature 562, 24–28 (2018)

This Symposium builds on the initial findings presented and discussed at ECER 2023 NW30 (Lysgaard & Elf, 2023). It is based on a large Danish research project and co-lab between different Danish educational institutions focusing on concepts of quality in sustainability education in primary and lower secondary education. The Symposium draws on international perspectives on quality to embed the findings within the larger field covered by NW30 and ensure that it adds to the body of knowledge within ESE research.

The papers presented at this symposium draw on qualitative and quantitative inquiries into how concepts of quality are expressed and experienced within Danish primary schools in relationship to sustainability education. The aim of the symposium is motivated by what we identify as a potential to develop further and discuss conceptual challenges relating to the often very conflicting nature of how we can understand quality in ESE. We want to contribute further to discussions of ongoing theoretical and methodological challenges relating to how we can conceptualise quality and whose quality we are interested in.

The symposium is guided by an interest in pragmatism (Dewey, 1913) 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). Rather, quality must be inferred interpretatively and complementarily from qualitative and quantitative data analyses drawing on multiple and mixed methods (Stake, 1995).

At the outset, the conceptual paper 1 situates the discussion of concepts of quality within the ESE field in relationship to the diverging but also overlapping traditions of Anglo-Saxon-inspired curriculum research and European continental notions of didactics. The paper serves to underline the need for empirical and conceptual critical examinations of how concepts of quality are leveraged within ESE research and practice.

Paper 2 presents a qualitative approach that explores the perspectives of primary and secondary school students and how more knowledge about their experiences with sustainability education can inform and qualify a better understanding of what we call experienced quality. The ambition is to explore how investigating the students' perspectives and experiences can inform discussions of different qualities in sustainability education and the potential in how this can qualify the generation of knowledge about teaching green transition.

Paper 3 builds on the discussions of quality by drawing on a quantitative data on Danish youth and their perceptions and understanding of sustainability issues and their own position in relation to these challenges. A specific focus is the relation, or lack of relation, between acquired knowledge and engagement in sustainability issues.

The final paper presents a specific case for teaching on sustainability issues: the case of waste in teaching in lower secondary education. An important emphasis of this paper is the dilemmas that often show up in teaching. Here as part of relationship between the teachers’ efforts to develop interesting and engaging teaching focusing on waste and the formation of the pupils understanding of their own action and possibilities for partaking in wider sustainability practices.

This paper examines the different approaches within ESE teaching based on the entangled trajectories of Anglo-Saxon curriculum research positions and European continental didactic tradition (Buckler & Creech, 2014; Scott & Gough, 2003; Vare & Scott, 2007). Through a tracing of the positions within ESE and their epistemological, historical and regional influences, it is argued that these differences show up as a multifaceted landscape, more that as bi-polar positions. This both influence specific current conceptualizations of what can be considered quality in ESE teaching, but also highlights challenges in changing both implicit and explicit trajectories of thought and practice (Brückner, Lysgaard, & Elf, Forthcoming). By pointing towards the tensions between subject specificity, general ambitions and systemic ambitions of within and across different approaches to ESE education it is argued that there is more linking the different traditions than what separates them, but that tropes, blind spots and bald spots also develop according to the foundational approaches and that this can be seen as underlying factors in the rapid development of new concepts and understandings of quality in ESE research and practice.

Brückner, M., Lysgaard, J. A., & Elf, N. (Forthcoming). Dimensions of Quality in Environmental and Sustainability education research Environmental Education Research. Buckler, C., & Creech, H. (2014). Shaping the future we want: UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development; final report. Paris: UNESCO. Scott, W., & Gough, S. (2003). Sustainable development and learning - Framing the issues: RoutledgeFarmer. Vare, P., & Scott, B. (2007). Learning for a Change: Exploring the Relationship Between Education and Sustainable Development. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 1(2).

This paper explores the perspectives of primary and secondary school students and how more knowledge about their experiences with sustainability education can inform and qualify a better understanding of what we call experienced quality as a contribution to the Environmental and Sustainability Education Research-field (ESE) (Brückner et al., Forthcoming; Elf, 2022). Based on a current scoping review, the ESE field reflects a variety of examples of quality concerning sustainability education (Brückner et al., forthcoming). Examining the diversity in different approaches and discussions of quality in relation to sustainability education, we argue that there is emphasis on studies focusing on mainly two dominating trends: Firstly, examples of quality representing an intended quality view e.g. the development of quality criteria building on values and norms such as ‘participation’ and ‘democratic decision making’ but also qualities in terms of acting, reflecting, communication, cooperation and teamwork (Breiting et al., 2005; Breiting & Wickenberg, 2010). Secondly, we also identified a range of examples stressing dimensions of documented quality (Brückner et al., forthcoming). These examples are of a more evaluative character, illustrating different cases of motivated initiatives with an emphasis on how different indicators, standards or criteria can ensure quality enhancement while being indicative of the implementation of an ESE process (Roberts, 2009; Rode & Michelsen, 2008; Singer-Brodowski et al., 2019). Examining the representations of the trends mentioned above of quality views, we identify a gap in studies representing experienced quality in ESE, and we especially see implications toward a lack of studies examining the student perspective (Brückner et al., forthcoming). Other researchers have previously pointed out that despite being the primary concern of education, the students’ perspectives often figure in the background of theory and research concerning sustainability education (Payne, 1997; Rickinson, 2001). Therefore, this paper aims to place the student perspective in the foreground by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at three different primary-level schools in Denmark that explicitly work with sustainability in their teaching (CHORA, 2024). Based on focus group interviews with 30 students in 5-6th grade, including participatory observation, we present key findings and themes on how students participate, perceive and experience sustainability education (Gilliam & Gulløv, 2016, 2022; Gulløv & Højlund, 2015; Lehtonen et al., 2019; Verlie, 2019). The ambition is to explore how the students’ experiences can inform discussions of different qualities in sustainability education and the potential in how this can qualify the generation of knowledge about teaching green transition.

Brückner, M., Lysgaard, J. A., & Elf, N. (Forthcoming). Dimensions of Quality in Environmental and Sustainability education research Environmental Education Research. Buckler, C., & Creech, H. (2014). Shaping the future we want: UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development; final report. Paris: UNESCO. Scott, W., & Gough, S. (2003). Sustainable development and learning - Framing the issues: RoutledgeFarmer. Vare, P., & Scott, B. (2007). Learning for a Change: Exploring the Relationship Between Education and Sustainable Development. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 1(2).

In this paper we aim at answering the following research questions: What perceptions and beliefs towards ecological sustainability issues do Danish students in lower secondary school express? Do they fear climate change, and do they belief in saving the planet? Do they know Fridays for future, and are they engaged in it? How do they think about and handle their smartphones? Significant results of these and similar questions will be presented from a data collection from 1267 students in November 2023. The results will be tested against common background variables such as gender and socio-economic background and their level of knowledge about ecological sustainability issues. A general high level of knowledge seems not to correlate with engagement. While fear for climate change is high, their belief in saving the planet is not much lower? Such seemingly contradictory results will be discussed in relations to findings in other studies (Gericke et al., 2019) and theoretical considerations (Ratinen & Uusiautti, 2020; Straume, 2020; Pooley & O’Connor, 2000)

Gericke, N., Boeve-de Pauw, J., Berglund, T., & Olsson, D. (2019). The Sustainability Consciousness Questionnaire. Sustainable Development, 27(1), 35-49. Pooley, J. A., & O’Connor, M. (2000). Environmental Education and Attitudes: Emotions and Beliefs are What is Needed. Environment and Behavior, 32(5), 711-723. Ratinen, I., & Uusiautti, S. (2020). Finnish Students’ Knowledge of Climate Change Mitigation and Its Connection to Hope. Sustainability, 12(6), 2181. Straume, I. S. (2020). What may we hope for? Education in times of climate change. Constellations, 27(3), 540-552.

This paper explores the teaching and learning of issues concerning waste, waste management and recycling in lower-secondary school as part of the broader aim of an education for green transition. Building on the claim that the notion of quality teaching is a combination of both successful and good teaching (Fenstermacher & Richardson, 2005) the question of the paper is how it is possible to balance these two when the topic of the lesson is waste. The paper discusses how teachers face dilemmas of creating interesting lessons about green transition and ‘green values’ on the one hand and supporting the formation of students’ ‘green behaviors’ or ‘green habits’ on the other hand. Analyzing and interpreting narratives from practicing teachers it is shown, how different school conditions are experienced as both enabling and constraining for the development of a ‘waste education’ (Jørgensen, Madsen & Læssøe, 2018). This is followed by a discussion of Dewey’s theory of interest (Dewey, 1913; Jonas, 2011) and theory of habit (Dewey, 1922; Tryggvason, Sund & Öhman, 2022) and their significance for understanding education for green transition in general and waste education in lower-secondary school in particular.

Dewey, J. (1913). Interest and Effort in Education. Houghton Mifflin. Dewey, J. (1922). Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology. Henry Holt. Fenstermacher, G.D. & Richardson, V. (2005). On Making Determinations of Quality in Teaching. Teachers College Record, 107 (1), 186-213. Jonas, M.E. (2011). Dewey’s Conception of Interest and its Significance for Teacher Education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43 (2), 112-129. 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. Tryggvason, A., Sund, L. & Öhman, J. (2022). Schooling and ESE: revisiting Stevenson’s gap from a pragmatist perspective. Environmental Education Research, 28 (8), 1237-1250.

Panel Proposal

In this session scholars explore the theory and practice of global citizenship education, with a special focus on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda for sustainability. The objective of the session is to introduce new paradigms, perspectives and practices in higher education in the field of global citizenship education. The presentations purposefully address educational institutions and curriculum development from across different countries which share a common ethical perspective. Soka or value-creating education is an approach to curriculum developed in twentieth century Japan. The panel explores key terms and definitions being used by faculty in classrooms in relation to teaching for global citizenship and sustainability at Soka institutions and Soka-informed curriculum, including terms such as happiness, peace, sustainability, hope, and service.

Overall, scholars in this session explore several converging themes within their respective presentations:

1. An exploration of ethical and values-based perspectives that is lacking in the present discourse on education for global citizenship.
2. The idea of value-creating education, sustainability, and global citizenship as organizing principles for rethinking the curriculum across diverse education settings in Europe, and beyond.
3. An examination of existing and alternative pedagogical models and practices, including from non-western perspectives that can contribute to the intercultural dimension of global citizenship and sustainability education.

Structure of the session: The chairperson will introduce the session, followed by three presentations, and a discussion led by an expert in the field (listed as the final presenter).

Paper 1

An intercultural approach to the curriculum and learning for sustainability and global citizenship

Abstract:

This paper is based on the question, "how can we integrate sustainability and inclusion into university teaching and learning?" Arguing the relevance of education for global, social and ecological justice, the author will share from research work and teaching for an intercultural approach to education, and the use of value-creating global citizenship education as a pedagogical approach to learning (Sharma 2020).

Paper 2

Active learning for global citizenship and sustainability: Case studies at Soka University, Japan

Abstract:

Global issues such as the climate emergency makes it essential to teach social justice and sustainability, for example, through education for sustainable development and global citizenship. However, researchers and teachers are struggling to develop effective pedagogical methods and contents (Goren and Yemini, 2017). This presentation shares examples of two case studies at Soka University. The first is a cross-university global citizenship program aiming to develop students with three core competencies – spirit, skills, and service. The second is a class at the Faculty of Economics that promotes active student learning through engaging with sustainability issues on campus and in the community.

Paper 3

Rediscovering purpose and value creation in higher education for social change at the University of Alcalá, Spain

Abstract:

In the current societal landscape marked by a crisis of values, this paper addresses the crucial reevaluation of university education’s purpose. Beyond skill acquisition, the proposal is to give meaning to higher education through an understanding of the individual’s role in constructing their own personal values connected to social justice and sustainability. Exploring hedonic and eudaimonia theories, and viewing happiness as an emergent structure, we advocate a transformative education approach. Through the analysis of the work carried out in teacher training, we illustrate how educators can comprehend their role as agents of social change, creating value in their lives and transforming society.