Conference Agenda

Amid a global shift toward decolonisation in education, this research aims to identify evidence-based strategies for developing a sustainable, inclusive, and culturally responsive curriculum. As universities advocate for inclusivity in curricula, it remains crucial to scrutinise the impact of these strategies on educational spaces. Although educators acknowledge the move towards sustainable intercultural and inclusive education, challenges persist in integrating these practices effectively (Greer, 2020; Stentifod & Koutsouris, 2022).

Recent studies highlight the transformative nature of decolonising sustainability in education, challenging dominant narratives, fostering cultural sensitivity, and promoting equity (Hutchinson et al, 2023). Creating an environment that allows learners the freedom to explore innovative and ‘disruptive’ ideas facilitates the development of critical perspectives, encouraging reflection on individual values, attitudes, behaviours and lifestyle choice. Recognising the interconnectedness of social, cultural and environmental dimensions is essential in shaping sustainable solutions (Sorkos & Hajisoteriou, 2020).

The Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Framework emphasises the urgency of instilling sustainability principles across policies, curricula and practices (UNESCO, 2020). However, a critical reflection is needed as ESD tends to be treated as a thematic topic rather than adopting a systemic approach. To address this, the study explores how education can empower the younger generation to make informed decisions for environmental integrity, economic viability, and cultural diversity (Ajmal et al, 2017). In what ways can we shift the global education agenda’s primary focus from solely assessing access and quality through learning outcomes to placing greater emphasis on the educational content’s role in promoting a sense of responsibility towards sustainable practices?

This paper delves into these transformative processes, aiming to improve stakeholders’ readiness towards ESD by 2030. This includes empowering students and training staff through a holistic approach, encompassing the whole student lifecycle. Inclusive involvement of all stakeholders, from educational leadership to administrative professionals, and fostering student partnerships is emphasised.

Research Questions:

• How can sustainability education be decolonised to ensure inclusivity and cultural sensitivity in diverse education settings?
• What are the existing challenges and opportunities for integrating decolonised sustainable education, considering the diverse cultural contexts?

Grounded in critical pedagogy, postcolonial theory, and sustainability education, the research explores cultural biases and historical perspectives that shape sustainability education (Shahjahan et al, 2022). Emphasising an interdisciplinary approach, the research investigates how decolonial thinking can inform the development of inclusive and intercultural sustainability education.

The aims and objectives include integrating sustainable development principles into teaching, learning, and curriculum. The research seeks to foster cohesion, enhance understanding on culturally relevant sustainability education, address the intersectionality of social, cultural, and environmental issues, and engage marginalised groups in the development and implementation of sustainability education initiatives. Ultimately, evidence-based recommendations will inform policy changes, initiatives, and strategic developments across educational institutions and communities.

Reference to the Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2015), especially SDG 4 on ensuring “inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”, is more frequent in discourses on inclusive education (Resch et al., 2021). However, Heigl et al. (2022, p. 19) emphasize the need for further research on the intersections of inclusion and sustainability. Based on their situational analysis on these intersections in schools in Austria, teachers are in a central position between the school structure and teacher training, which are interrelated with regard to the curriculum. On the policy level, teachers are positioned as “powerful change agents” with regard to the SDGs (UNESCO, 2017, p. 51). Previous work on teacher agency underlines the need for taking into account the situatedness (e.g. Riveros et al., 2012), for instance, with regard to teachers’ way of negotiating restrictive policies in their daily “on-the-ground decisions” in classrooms (Wessel Powell et al., 2019, p. 171). As with regard to different understandings of inclusive education, their specific situatedness on local levels (Clairborne & Balakrishan, 2020) as well as “backlash against this idea(l)” (Powell, 2023, p. xxii) emphasize the need for „critical reflection and engagement in dialogue about complex social issues that are intertwined between the local and the global“ (Niemczyk, 2019, p. 4).

Linking inclusion to the overall aim which is also reflected in the SGDs of “achieving equity and attaining social justice in divergent contexts” (Powell 2023: xxii), we understand inclusive education as “a commitment to critical pedagogy” (Erevelles, 2014, p. x). Drawing on a theoretical framework based on social justice-oriented teaching, critical literacy, diversity and inclusive education (e.g. Everelles, 2014; Ortaçtepe Hart 2023; Vasequez et al., 2019; Zygmont & Clark, 2015), this paper focuses on exploring the intersections of inclusive education, social justice education and sustainability education in teacher education. Situated in specific contexts, developing teacher education for inclusion, social justice and sustainability needs to consider the global issue of the “lack of diversity within the teaching profession” (Heinz et al., 2022, p. 229). This implies addressing exclusion and (missing) representation while opposing essentialisation by building “critical awareness of teacher education and schools as sites of cultural practice” (Heinz et al., 2022, p. 229-230). This can be linked to Catarci’s (2021) perspective on “an educational approach to sustainability for everyone” which emphasizes the need for critical reflection, especially among those who represent majority positions to “allow them to become aware of the major critical issues of the contemporary world (migratory dynamics, armed conflicts, climate change, etc.) through a perspective of global citizenship” (p. 4-5).

This paper aims to explore challenges and possibilities in developing teacher education for inclusion, social justice and sustainability focusing on relationalities of the global and local or the ‘glocal’ (Luke, 2004) in the field of internationalization at home and digital learning formats. With an increased focus on shifting to digital or hybrid learning formats following the Covid-19 pandemic (Li & Xue, 2023), the relevance of internationalization at home (e.g. Beelen & Jones 2015) is emphasized in terms of sustainability. Focusing on possibilities of internationalization at home in teacher education is important for making international experiences accessible to all teacher candidates, particularly those who often face barriers to participating in a study-related stay abroad based on their financial or care-related situation (Rachbauer & Plank, 2021, p. 125).

Based on an interdisciplinary research and teaching collaboration between scholars from midwestern US and German universities in the field of literacy and language education, social studies education, English language teaching and inclusive education, this paper aims to contribute to understanding overall “complexities of ‘situatedness’” (Clarke, 2005, p. xxviii).

The ‘Voices of the Future’ project was jointly funded across environmental science, arts and humanities and social science (NERC NE/V021370/1]. It aimed to explore children’s relation to treescapes with a focus on belonging and hope. It brought together a number of disciplines including the science of tree-measuring, childhood studies and human geography. There was a particular focus on belonging and hope for treescapes in the project, and it is this focus that we will address in this presentation.

The future of treescapes belongs to children and young people (CYP). Despite increasing child and youth led environmental activism, CYP voices are still rarely heard in policy and practice. In our project, we worked with school children in a number of schools across the North-West of England, with both primary and secondary age children. Employing an innovative co-production approach, we draw together arts, humanities, social and scientific methods, and knowledge to imagine future treescapes that meet the interdependent needs of humans and the environment.

In the contexts where we worked, we were working with a mix of children and young people who had migrated from a number of different countries, including India, China and Pakistan, over a number of years, also, more recently, Afghanistan, Sudan and Somalia. Our team were diverse, and we focused very much on multilingual children and families. The experience of working in schools was a multilingual one, with many languages represented, particularly in central Manchester in the North-West of England. Many of the children were third, fourth or even fifth generation of migrant families who had moved to the North West of England to work in the many factories there in the 1950’s and 1960’s (Werbner 1990). They settled in small-scale terraced housing, often from the Victorian era in the UK, and their community life was close knit and involved many languages, including Urdu, Punjabi, Mandarin and Arabic.

Our focus in the presentation will be how trees afford opportunities to migrant children to engage dialogues to negotiate their national identities referencing their biographical and migrating histories (Savage et al 2010). We include stories from “being with trees in the school forest” opening dialogues about trees and children’s relations with the place in a transnational context. Here, we see stories which do not just represent but also make worlds. We see children’s stories as a messy mix of temporalities whereby story layers pile up and create the possibility of turn and return (Hohti and Tammi 2023, p 10). We also discussed the value of creating relational and democratic conditions for children to enable them to engage open dialogues about their belonging (ness) (Nunn 2022) as part of learning about their environments. We see these research encounters as potential space developing an emergent sense of belonging (Nunn 2022) among children. Children in these encounters are enabled to see themselves as co-researchers to document/record encounters of about trees and their environments.