Conference Agenda

The symposium centers on how Young people imagine the future and what it implies for their present dealing with contemporary life in an age of environmental disaster. Through taking outset in students’ perspectives, the symposium seeks to nuance the understanding of student’s relation and imagination of themselves in relation to or as part of a sustainable future. Further it deals with what can be done educationally to support cultivation of young people’s future expectations in constructive ways, for instance through playful classrooms and/or other kinds of research and educational playspaces (Rousell & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2022) and/or more flourishing in our schools and the use of outdoor spaces. Central questions are: To what extend and how is it possible and desirable to support young people to foster hope and/or positive imaginations about the future? To what extend and how is it possible and desirable so educate young people of today to become eco-democratic citizens and creators of a life-friendly society of tomorrow? To what extend is such aims and democratic education in need of becoming rethought in connection with eco-democracy? (Lundmark, 1998; Pickering et. al, 2020). Thus, prepare the young generation to support and achieve diverse, democratic social, and ecologically just sustainable societies – living within the Earth's carrying capacity – eco-democracy might be an important perspective helpful to think of and understanding educational change, but also enacting change in educational practice supporting living and learning democracy, young people's contemporary and imaginary future. The papers present different angles on this. The aim of the symposium is therefore to bring the papers into a shared conversation about educational research that focuses on young people, their perspectives, and how to respond educationally to the challanges of growing up on a damaged planet, in an ecologically unsustainable society, where many, not least young people dream of something better, yet risk becoming depressed, apathetic or anxious about the future, in the Anthropocene age we now live in (Paulsen, et. al. 2022).

The world's current environmental and climate crises are shaping the future in which our children grow up, which makes knowledge about how primary schools can and should currently navigate in this a subject of both existential and societal friction. This paper investigates how students understand, experience and relate to climate and sustainability issues, and how this informs their view on sustainability education. Despite being the primary concern of education, the students’ perspectives often figure in the background of theory and research concerning sustainability education (Brückner et al., 2023; 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 and school development (CHORA, 2024). Based on ten focus group interviews with around 30 students in 5-6th grade, including participatory observation in different educational settings in and outside the classroom. These empirical findings are combined with focus group interviews using creative methods that explore different ways for the students to express their experiences of sustainability education, which led to several examples containing both local-global, here-and-now and future perspectives. Building on this, this paper presents key findings and themes on how students participate, perceive and experience sustainability education. To explore which frictions and potentials arise through students’ meaning-making processes, expressions of actions, and connection-making etc., with a particular interest in examples of how different forms of we-stories, are illustrating often taken-for-granted categories as e.g. we at this school, we as a group, or we as humans (Verlie 2019; Lehtonen et al., 2019; Gulløv & Højlund, 2015; Gilliam & Gulløv, 2022). Centering the student, motivates an examination of both the child, children and their context, and a curiosity towards different representations of sustainability that incapsulates and illustrates the entangled, transnational, and complex interconnectedness of the children’s world-building. Specifically, looking at examples of fire-fighting as a concern of the students, both in a symbolic and practical sense, as their descriptions, stories and illustrations about sustainability education connect and contain notions of flourishing nature and burning factories, this presentation will present a qualitative perspective on how to nuance the understanding of which different aspects and factors influence sustainability education and the student’s relation and imagination of themselves in relation to or as part of a sustainable future.

Brückner, M., Lysgaard, J., & Elf, N. (2023). Dimensions of Quality in Environmental and Sustainability Education Research. CHORA. (2024). 2030 SKOLER Verdensmålscertificering af uddannelsesinstitutioner. Retrieved 25th of January 2024 from https://chora2030.dk/verdensmaalscertificering-af-skoler/ Gilliam, L., & Gulløv, E. (2016). Children of the Welfare State: Civilising Practices in Schools, Childcare and Families (Vol. 57734). Pluto Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1jktscx Gilliam, L., & Gulløv, E. (2022). Children as potential - a window to cultural ideals, anxieties and conflicts. Children's geographies, 20(3), 311-323. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2019.1648760 Gulløv, E., & Højlund, S. (2015). Feltarbejde blandt børn : metodologi og etik i etnografisk børneforskning (1. udgave. ed.). Gyldendal. Lehtonen, A., Salonen, A. O., & Cantell, H. (2019). Climate Change Education: A New Approach for a World of Wicked Problems. In Sustainability, Human Well-Being, and the Future of Education (pp. 339-374). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78580-6_11 Payne, P. (1997). Embodiment and Environmental Education. Environmental Education Research, 3(2), 133-153. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350462970030203 Pink, S., & Morgan, J. (2013). Short-Term Ethnography: Intense Routes to Knowing: Short-Term Ethnography. Symbolic interaction, 36(3), 351-361. https://doi.org/10.1002/symb.66 Rickinson, M. (2001). Learners and Learning in Environmental Education: A critical review of the evidence. Environmental Education Research, 7(3), 207-320. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620120065230

Many of the problems in the Anthropocene age we now live in – such as the climate crisis – seem rather depressing and unsolvable, due to prevailing political regimes and human folly (e.g. Scranton, 2015). It is, therefore, only natural that this situation gives rise to a plethora of hopelessness, anxiety, passivity, frustrations, as well as burn out and ignorance strategies among young people (Paulsen et. al. 2022). As argued by Marek Oziewicz (2022), contemporary youth predominantly (through media etc.) encounter dystopic narratives regarding the future of the planet and their own lives. In this paper three different types of future narratives and expectations are discussed: a) a dystopic vision where 'everything will collapse,' b) a technofix perspective wherein 'technical solutions will be developed to solve or at least mitigate the worst problems related to climate and ecological crisis,' and c) an outlook where 'we will develop new ways of living, more life-friendly, in partnership with the living world’. In line with Oziewicz (Ibid.) it is proposed that the third type is what we need most, but that it is only marginally cultivated and creatively engaged with by young people today (Nørreklit and Paulsen, 2023). On this background and based on posthuman educational research approaches (Rousell & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2022) the author of this paper have developed a solarpunk speculative cli-fi-roleplaying game, together with Sara Mosberg Iversen, which have been proto-tested with 12 young students, during four days in January 2024, as a potential educational tool to facilitate non-dystopic and life-friendly future imaginations, but also deep reflections on hope and the role of one’s expectations on one’s present engagement in the world. The paper discusses the results of the first testing of the game, in relation to the forementioned 3 types of narratives. By this the paper tries to add important aspects to present discussions about what role education can play in facilitating a transformation to a life-friendly future society. How can education support young people’s future?

Scranton, R. (2015). Learning to die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the end of a civilization. City Lights Publishers. Nørreklit, L., & Paulsen, M. (2023). Life-friendly: who we are and who we want to be. Journal of Pragmatic Constructism, 13(1), 9-22 Oziewicz, M. (2022). Planetarianism now: On Anticipatory imagination, young people’s literature, and hope for the planet. In M. Paulsen et al. (Eds.) Pedagogy in the Anthropocene: Rewilding education for a new earth. Palgrave. Paulsen, M., jagodzinski, J., & Hawke, S. (2022). A Critical Introduction. In M. Paulsen, J. jagodzinski, & S. Hawke (red.), Pedagogy in the Anthropocene: Re-Wilding Education for a New Earth. Palgrave Macmillan. Rousell, D., & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, A. (2022). Posthuman research playspaces: Climate child imaginaries. Taylor & Francis.

The Anthropocene is, among other things, an age of disentanglement, disenfranchisement, and of onto-epistemological isolation of the human from its surroundings. The polarization is manifest on multiple scales, to the point that we risk leaving young people feeling both hopelessly and helplessly alone against the troubles of our time. The importance of educating for the ability to not only tolerate, but to be active in both imagining and practicing acts of peaceful, mutually constitutive being-with (Haraway, 2008) cannot be understated. Experiences of interdependence and -connectedness is vital for human well-being, yet the paper also takes legitimate human experience of interdependency with nature as a necessary component of successful Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) (Lloro-Bidart & Banschbach, 2019). The aim of this presentation is to examine the potential of meetings between human learners and the more-than-human as part of ESE. More specifically, the paper discusses such meetings in ESE when structured as didactical perspective-taking, building on the critique of reductionism in perspective-taking by Iris Marion Young (1997) as part of the larger discussion on representations of nature in ESE. Importantly, if ESE is to be made to be an eco-democratic endeavour, then the question of the place and representation of the more-than-human becomes paramount (Vetlesen, 2023). While some degree of reduction in education is unavoidable, the paper contends that a less isolated, ahierarchal, interdependent awareness of “nature” in all its forms both is and can be represented in education. Following this, the paper argues for both the possibility and the necessity of respectful reduction as an approach when taking the perspective of more-than-human Others. Here it is suggested that the value of such respectful boundary-crossings between human and more-than-human may supersede the lack of perfect representation, given the potential of revealing previously unsensed entanglements and relationships. The paper further proposes didactical more-than-human perspective-taking as an avenue for of engendering ‘receptive-responsiveness’ to nature as described by Bonnett (2012). Childrens’ meetings with more-than-human Other perspectives may thus serve as an opportunity to broaden conceptions of whom and what to acknowledge as morally relevant, opening for imagining alternative ways for young people to envision their futures. The theoretical discussion will be contextualised with preliminary findings from ongoing empirical research on more-than-human perspective-taking practices in Norwegian secondary education.

Bonnett, M. (2012). Environmental concern, moral education and our place in nature. Journal of Moral Education, 41(3), 285-300. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2012.691643 Gehlbach, H., & Mu, N. (2023). How We Understand Others: A Theory of How Social Perspective Taking Unfolds. Review of General Psychology, 27(3), 282-302. https://doi.org/10.1177/10892680231152595 Haraway, D. J. (2008). When Species Meet. University of Minnesota Press. Leopold, A. (1949). The Land Ethic. In A Sand County Almanac. Penguin Classics. (Reprinted from 2020) Lloro-Bidart, T., & Banschbach, V. S. (2019). Introduction to Animals in Environmental Education: Whither Interdisciplinarity? In Animals in Environmental Education (pp. 1-16). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98479-7_1 Vetlesen, A. J. (2023). Animal lives and why they matter. Routledge. Young, I. M. (1997). Asymmetrical Reciprocity: On Moral Respect, Wonder and Enlarged Thought. Constellations, 3(3), 340-363. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8675.1997.tb00064.x