Conference Agenda

Increasingly rapid and disruptive technological and socio-ecological changes drive contemporary discussion about the uncertainties of our presents and futures, in society and education. In education, policy makers are responding with pedagogical concepts and frameworks. For example, both the OECD (Häggström & Schmidt, 2021; OECD, 2019) and the European Commission's ‘GreenComp’, include futures literacy. (Bianchi et al., 2022).

Various megatrends drive uncertainty, e.g. pandemic, war, human catastrophes. Here, we focus on two inter-linked mega-trends, which raise questions of how we want to live in the present and future: 1) sustainable development and education for sustainable development (ESD); and 2) the rapid expansion of digital technologies. The negotiation of past, present and future has always been inscribed in pedagogy (Koller, 2020; Thompson, 2019). A struggle for futures comes to a head in pedagogical contexts such as education for sustainable development and media education, which have similarities in their premises and didactics (Grünberger, 2022; Rau & Rieckmann, 2023; Selwyn, 2023). A further commonality is the question of uncertain futures.

This symposium explores aspects of uncertainty in a world characterised by digital technology, with regard to ESD in Europe, drawing on data and experience from Teacher Academy Project-Teaching Sustainability (TAP-TS). Our research and analysis is anchored in a shared theoretical basis in social-constructivism, and in particular critical-constructivist perspectives on social learning with a foundation - in the broadest sense - in critical theory. For this, we draw particularly on Habermas (2021) for insights into the normative foundations of critical theory, Fuchs (2020) for insights into criticality, capitalism and media study, Vienni-Baptista et al (2023) for communication in transdisciplinary work, and Gradinaru’s (2016) revisioning of Anderson on imagined community.

The three papers presented here offer distinct and complementary perspectives on digital technology and ESD. The first, "Coping with Uncertainty in Education for Sustainable Development in a Digital World", discusses this question on a general level. PAPER 1 introduces the topic and leads on questions for educational practice and in school. The characteristics of transdisciplinary, open learning communities for strengthening and transforming education in times of uncertainty are analysed in PAPER 2 "Digital media and open learning communities for international sustainability teacher education". Our central focus is the question of how educators’ transdisciplinary relationships across boundaries of academic disciplines, institutions (pre- and in-service teacher education, primary and secondary schools, civil society), and nations, facilitated in part through digital media, have fostered improvements and even transformations in sustainability education. The specifics of "open educational resources'' and “open educational practices” (OPAL, 2011) are examined in PAPER 3. We emphasise in particular the power of critical reflection to prompt agency for sustainability and the status of TAP-TS LTPs as Open Educational Resources (OERs). We also discuss the LTP’s inherent 'beta nature' – all are work-in-progress and are offered as proposals rather than prescribed as ‘solutions’ to teachers and other educators taking part in TAP-TS events and activities. In this way we foreground the TAP-TS aim of enabling learners to participate more fully in a post-digital society.

Following the three contributions, the discussant will formulate a critical view and moderate the discussion with symposium participants with a view to furthering analytical insights within and between papers. In the course of the discussion, a collaborative online pinboard will be used to secure the results, allowing all participants to comment. The results will be taken into account in the further development of the TAP-TS project and will help the project to navigate its way towards the planned goals.

Much has been said in recent years about living in a world of uncertainty. In addition to wars and growing inequalities, we believe that two trends in particular play a central role for the question of future development and pedagogical approaches to that: firstly, the urgent question of sustainable development in our societies, as is discussed around the SDGs (United Nations, 2015) or the EU GreenComp-Competence Framework (Bianchi et al., 2022). And, secondly, the question of what ethical choices we need to make in the present regarding future digital technological developments (e.g. the development of Artificial Intelligence, Discriminating Data and the question of a global internet coverage) (e.g. Chun, 2021; Crawford, 2021; Weich & Macgilchrist, 2023). In addition to addressing these pressing issues, it is also difficult to adopt a decolonizing perspective that allows these central questions to be discussed from a global perspective (c.f. Moyo, 2018). This challenge is compounded when the issues are discussed with children, who are already involved in these future issues in terms of participation (Grünberger, 2023). The proposed presentation explores the question of pedagogical guidelines for dealing with uncertainty, conflicts and paradoxes in the context of education for sustainable development and digitality. Central theoretical foundations can be found in the discourses of media education, media studies, political education, education for sustainable development and educational research with a decolonial perspective. The argumentation is based on these discourses. The presentation focuses on the relationship of learners and teachers while coping with uncertain topics. Also the presentation focuses on learning and teaching scenarios and materials in this context. This is not only a central question for media education and ESD but also a question of school development, because the handling of knowledge, time, space and roles in the school context has changed in recent years and continues to develop due to uncertainties. Teachers are no longer the guardians of scientifically legitimized knowledge; they are becoming learning companions and co-learners and co-researchers. Together with the learners, they navigate through divergent knowledge and collaboratively discuss the question of future developments in a digital era.

Bianchi, G., Pisiotis, U., & Cabrera, M. (2022). GreenComp The European sustainability competence framework. Publications Office of the European Union. Chun, W. H. K. (2021). Discriminating Data: Correlation, Neighborhoods, and the New Politics of Recognition. The MIT Press. Crawford, K. (2021). Atlas of AI: Power, politics, and the planetary costs of artificial intelligence. Yale University Press. Grünberger, N. (2023). Participation as a Key Principle of Education for Sustainable Development in the Postdigital Era. In A. Weich & F. Macgilchrist (Hrsg.), Postdigital Participation in Education (S. 13–34). Springer Nature Switzerland. Moyo, L. (2018). Rethinking the information society. A decolonial and border gnosis of the digital divide in Africa and the Global South. In M. Ragnedda & G. W. Muschert (Hrsg.), Theorizing digital divides (S. 133–144). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. United Nations. (2015). Sustainable Development Goals. United Nations Sustainable Development. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ Weich, A., & Macgilchrist, F. (2023). Postdigital Participation in Education: An Introduction. In Postdigital Participation in Education: How Contemporary Media Constellations Shape Participation (pp. 1-10). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.

Sustainability education is vital for the urgent transition to more just and sustainable futures, but also an inherently complex, uncertain and challenging pedagogical proposition. This complexity is apparent in the 17 “integrated and inseparable” Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2015); and in distinct and diverse narratives around sustainability and sustainability education in political, academic and popular discourses (Tikly, 2023). ‘Universal’ definitions and frameworks must be negotiated in relation to particular socio-ecological contexts (Brockwell et al, 2022). Moreover, as formal education is deeply implicated in socio-ecological crises (Orr, 2004), realising the potential of education for sustainability involves moving beyond ‘improvement’ to transformation of education (UNESCO, 2021). Transdisciplinarity, which refers to approaches and processes which occur between, across and beyond traditional academic and social boundaries, including academic disciplines, but also professions, cultures, groups, fields of action, social worlds, nations, and media (Kondratjuk, 2023), is necessary for transformation in education (Mittelstraß, 2002). In this paper, we focus on transdisciplinarity in the context of the Erasmus + Teacher Academy Project –Teaching Sustainability (TAP-TS). The TAP-TS Consortium of 11 teacher education organisations, across 7 European countries, includes schools, universities, a government agency, an educational enterprise, and a civil society organisation. The project aims to foster social learning, including transformation, through transdisciplinary engagement across disciplinary, institutional and national boundaries. Digital technologies are both a thematic focus of TAP-TS, through the module ‘Sustainability and Digitality’ and a medium for transdisciplinary learning environments and interactions, for instance in the ‘Climate Crisis Resilience module. TAP-TS aims to foster European educators’ competences for sustainability education through engagement with educational materials and in online, hybrid and face to face learning events as part of an international community of practice. Community of practice is a model of social learning which recognises the complexity and particularities of distinct pedagogical contexts (Wenger-Trayner et. al., 2020). As such TAP-TS brings educators with a shared commitment to sustainability education together, recognising that educators engage with and apply learning in relation to their contexts of practice (ibid.). In this presentation, we describe various applications of digital technologies as part of TAP-TS; the extent to which these have enabled and limited social learning as part of our community of practice; and the ‘level of value’ achieved (ibid.). We draw on data from the project’s formative evaluation (KRE, 2023) that includes participant observation, document analysis, focus groups, and surveys.

Brockwell, A.J.,et al. (2022) Designing indicators and assessment tools for SDG Target 4.7: a critique of the current approach and a proposal for an ’Inside-Out’ strategy, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. Kondratjuk, M., et., al. (2023) (Eds.). Transdisziplinarität in der Bildungsforschung. Perspektiven und Herausforderungen theoretischer, method(olog)ischer und empirischer Grenzgänge. Reihe Studien zur Schul- und Bildungsforschung (ZSB). Springer VS. K and R Education (2023) Teacher Academy project Teaching Sustainability: Evaluation of year 1 activities. Mittelstraß, J. (2002). Transdisciplinarity - New Structures in Science. In Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (ed.), Innovate Structure in Basic Research. (pp. 43-54). Orr, D.W. (2004) Earth in Mind: On education, environment and the human prospect. Island Press. Tikly, L. (2023) Decolonizing Education for Sustainable Futures: Some Conceptual Starting Points, in: Hutchinson, Y. et al. (eds) (2023) Decolonizing Education for Sustainable Futures. Bristol Studies in Comparative and International Education. Pp. 19-48. UNESCO (2021) Reimagining our futures together: a new social contract for education. International Commission on the Futures of Education Wenger-Trayner, E. & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2020). Learning to make a difference. Value creation in social learning spaces. Cambridge University Press

Educating towards more sustainable ways of living requires a considerable change in what is taught and how teachers are prepared and supported to meet this change. It involves exploring the ways “different values and lifestyle choices are related to sustainable practices” (Ilstedt et al., 2017) and matching emerging understandings to engaging learning materials and appropriate pedagogies. The TAP-TS project engages substantively with this challenge at a European level. The project centres on designing, assembling, testing and validating Learning & Teaching Packages (LTPs) - sets of novel and innovative OERs that take as their start-points the EU GreenComp framework for teaching and learning for sustainability, and build towards reflective-engagements that foster values, agency, and informed life-choices. These LTPs explore how sustainability can be introduced at different educational levels and which pedagogical approaches, concepts, and educational resources could be appropriate (Rieckmann 2021). At their core is the idea of enhancing teacher agency through critical & agentic reflection (c.f. Leijen et al 2020; Papenfuss et al 2019; Lunt 2020). TAP-TS engagements (co-production, piloting and use of LTPs) rest on a vision of professional learning based in a model that is ‘deeply reflective’ (Cavadas et al 2023; Goodwin et al 2023) and ‘values-led’ (Purdy et al 2023). This paper presents the TAP-TS experience of designing and building opportunities for this systematic, reflective teacher learning. We describe in detail our work and the centrality of EU GreenComp (Bianchi et al 2022) to fostering agency through critical reflective engagement. We outline the TAP-TS Roadmap for planning deeply reflective learning experiences within project activities (involving resources, materials, and approaches). We also describe the TAP-TS ‘MaRIA’ framework being developed to guide Follow-Up activities that engage critically with TAP-TS LTPs. In this way, we hope to initiate a conversation among the European teacher education community around values-led, teachers’ reflective learning and how this can be catalysed through criticality regarding educating for sustainability and just transition. The presentation emphasises particularly TAP-TS work to prompt critical agency, and the status of TAP-TS LTPs as Open Educational Resources (OERs) with their inherent 'beta nature' – all are work-in-progress and are offered as proposals for joint explorations rather than as ‘solutions’ to teachers and other educators from across Europe taking part in TAP-TS events. In all this TAP-TS works towards enabling learners and teachers to participate more fully in a post-digital society.

Goodwin, A. L., Madalińska-Michalak, J., & Flores, M. (2023). Rethinking teacher education in/for challenging times: reconciling enduring tensions, imagining new possibilities. European Journal of Teacher Education, 46(5) 1-16. Ilstedt, S., Eriksson, E. & Hesselgren, M.I.A. (2017). Sustainable lifestyles: How values affect sustainable practises. Nordes 2017 (7): DESIGN+POWER Leijen, Ä., Pedaste, M., & Lepp, L. (2020). Teacher agency following the ecological model: How it is achieved and how it could be strengthened by different types of reflection. British Journal of Educational Studies, 68(3), 295-310. Lunt, P. (2020). Practicing media—Mediating practice| beyond Bourdieu: The interactionist foundations of media practice theory. International Journal of Communication, 14, 18. Papenfuss, J., Merritt, E., Manuel-Navarrete, D., Cloutier, S., & Eckard, B. (2019). Interacting pedagogies: A review and framework for sustainability education. Journal of Sustainability Education, 20(4), 1-19. Purdy, N., Hall, K., Khanolainen, D., & Galvin, C. (2023). Reframing teacher education around inclusion, equity, and social justice: towards an authentically value-centred approach to teacher education in Europe. European Journal of Teacher Education, 46(5), 755-771. Rieckmann, M. (2021). Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung. Ziele, didaktische Prinzipien und Methoden. In: Demmler, Kathrin/Schorb, Bernd (Hrsg.): Medienbildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung. Kopaed-Verlag, S. 12-19.