Conference Agenda

This paper explores how care ethics might inform the notion of care mentioned within the European Commission’s GreenComp: The European Sustainability Competence Framework (Bianchi et al, 2022) and how such caring might be fostered through environmental and sustainability education (ESE).

While caring has been seen as a competency within certain professions e.g., medical professionals, caring for nature as a sustainability competency is a fairly recent development. While developing a caring relationship towards nature e.g., respect for nature (Sandler, 2006) or nature connectedness (Lumber et al, 2017) are commonly referred to in ESE, the notion of care as a sustainability competency more strongly conveys an action component.

We view this as a shift in focus from what Noddings (1999) described as caring about to caring for, moving from a more abstract notion of care about nature, to a more active form of caring for nature, emphasising the importance of direct engagement with nature. However, within the GreenComp Framework, mentions of care predominantly refer to caring about rather than actively caring for nature. The one instance which aligns explicitly with caring for: ‘Cares proactively for the planet’ (Bianchi et al, 2022, p. 51) is placed under the attitude category rather than the skills category that ordinarily refers to taking action. Further, there is little guidance on what ‘cares proactively for the planet’ might entail or how this might be appraoched in educational practice.

To address this issue, we propose that the concept of care as outlined within care ethics, which is traditionally based on human-human relations and interactions, be extended to include nature/more-than-human. We suggest Noddings’ (2020) notion of caring relations and caring encounters, can be connected with the work of Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) on the situated relevance of care and the interconnectedness or entanglement of humans and nature/more-than-human in a relational web of care.

Aligning with Noddings (2002), caring for nature can be developed through caring relations enacted in the local environment through caring encounters with nature/the more-than-human, where learners are given practice in caring and reflection on those practices. This connects with Puig de la Bellacasa’s (2017, p. 22) emphasis on ‘everyday ecological doings’. Frequent, small encounters involving care for the environment, such as a beach clean or through nature-based play, can have a role in fostering care for nature (Postma & Smeyers, 2012). Richardson et al. (2020) found a correlation between engaging in simple nature activities (e.g., bird watching, taking time to notice bees, collecting pebbles) and pro-nature conservation behaviours.

Noddings (2002) argues that receptive attention is an essential characteristic of caring encounters.

‘When caring is directed to living things, I must consider their natures, ways of life, needs, and desires. And, although I can never accomplish it entirely, I try to apprehend the reality of the other’ (Noddings, 2013, p. 37)

We suggest wild pedagogies is an approach that aligns with the concept of receptive attention, being a pedagogical process where learning is allowed to emerge in natural settings, open-ended and receptive to the teaching of the natural world (Blenkinsop & Kuchta, 2024). Nature as co-teacher, a central concept or principle of wild pedagogies, is an approach that questions what and who a teacher is and actively engages with, listens to, and takes nature seriously as part of the educative process’ (Blenkinsop & Kuchta, 2024; Jickling et al, 2018; Nicol & Higgins, 2024).

Following Noddings (2002) via Puig de la Bellacasa (2017), caring for nature competency then, can be seen as ‘caring relations’ enacted in the local environment through caring encounters with nature/the more-than-human through a learning approach that is receptive to nature as co-teacher.

This presentation critically examines the theoretical foundations for the notion of the planetary good life as an aim of education. The concept of “planetary” has gained increasing traction in recent scholarly debates, including planetary Bildung, planetary well-being, planetary youth research, and planetary social pedagogy. What these concepts have in common is an effort to move beyond anthropocentrism toward a more-than-human, or a planetary view (Braidotti, 2013; Whatmore, 2002). The notion of planetary good life aligns with these perspectives, while also introducing a critical distinction. The idea of planetary good life is also closely related to the concept of flourishing which has particularly gained momentum as the OECD (2025) tries to shift its focus toward human flourishing as the aim of education. In terms of the history of ideas, both “flourishing” and “good life” can be understood as translations of Aristotle's concept of "eudaimonia”.

Thus, we build our ideas of planetary good life on an aristotelian virtual-ethical base (Aristotle, 1967). However, human well-being is intrinsically linked to the well-being of the broader ecological community. Thus, the concept of good life must be reframed within a planetary context, which calls for engaging with post-anthropocentric theoretical approaches such as deep ecology (Næss, 1973) to expand ethical considerations to include nonhuman forms of life. Teaching and learning of profound transformation of values and worldviews is complex (Birdham, 2025) and we suggest that virtue aesthetics (Saito, 2010) could offer new perspectives on learning “in” and “from” environmental and sustainability education (ESE) (Tilbury 1995).

The urgent need for cultural, societal, and ecological transformation is widely acknowledged, as our current life-styles are accelerating climate change, biodiversity loss, and other planetary crises. Within this context, the concept of the planetary good life has potential to foster the transformation that seeks shifts in epistemic, ethical, and existential orientations. These orientations are interrelated and often overlapping; together they provide a multidimensional framework for understanding the theoretical and practical implications of education aimed at fostering a planetary good life.

An important epistemic foundation of planetary good life is provided by the planetary boundaries framework, which offers a scientifically informed assessment of the state and limits of Earth’s life-supporting systems. (Richardson et al., 2023). Ethical orientation of planetary good life aims to re-thinking the ethical dimensions of human–nature relations from Aristotelian,anthropocentric virtue-ethics to expanded ethics that affirms the moral considerability of nonhuman life and acknowledges interdependence across life forms. (Næss, 1973; Reid et al, 2021)

The need for transformation is widely recognized in the field of ESE (Sterling, 2010) but there is no common understanding of what should transform and how it can be supported in education (Birdshall, 2025). Existential orientation of planetary good life pinpoints that fundamental changes in a learner’s values, beliefs, and worldviews is required (Putkonen et al., 2026).

This means critical reflection on the deeper ideas and assumptions that underpin unsustainable lifestyles, such as the prioritization of material well-being as the primary marker of success and happiness. In order to shape individuals’ foundational values and worldviews education should engage with existential questions concerning life’s purpose and human’s place in the world traditionally addressed in worldview education, including cosmological, ontological, theological, eschatological, teleological, aesthetical, and ethical dimensions. (Van der Kooij et. al., 2013; Hartman, 1986)

We contend that sustainable ways of living can be pursued from a plurality of worldviews—including both anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric, religious and secular perspectives—so long as they share a commitment to caring for the planet.

By articulating these theoretical starting points, this presentation contributes to ongoing scholarly discussions regarding sustainability transformations and highlights how the planetary good life can serve as a guiding conceptual framework.

The most recent formulation of the Norwegian curriculum (LK20) rephrases its Objectives Clause by introducing three cross-curricular themes that all subjects required to tackle. The Objectives Clause now requires education to open for pupils to «learn to think critically and act ethically and with environmental awareness» (UDIR, 2017). One of these cross-curricular themes is «Sustainable Development», Ethics education in Norwegian formal secondary education in Norway is however subsumed under the Religion and Worldviews subject of «KRLE», and becomes a small portion of a larger subject. Even so, the curriculum specifies that teaching should involve «participation in ethical reflection on nature and the place of the human in it», through discussion of «existential questions», as well as «reflections on how people, the environment and society affect each other, and on how we can make responsible choices» (UDIR, 2019). The requirements are in other words oriented towards the teaching of complex knowledges, skills, and attitudes, which can be challenging propositions for teachers and other educational practitioners, especially considering strong time constraints.

This paper proposal describes an exploratory empirical study of the teaching of environment and sustainability education (ESE) in formal secondary ethics education settings. The aim of the study is to describe and evaluate if and how environmental ethics are taught in the Anthropocene, with an especial focus on how the human is (discursively) envisaged and produced in terms of role, ethical responsibility, and more-than-human relationality. The study is part of an ongoing PhD project on environmental ethics education and more-than-human perspective-taking in formal education contexts, and will later be further developed into one of two empirical contributions. The current problem statement of the paper proposal is as follows:

Given current constraints, how do Norwegian teachers in lower secondary ethics education teach environmental ethics, and what understandnings of human responsibility and role are students thus afforded?

The theoretical lenses of the project are the ecofeminist and ecocentric ethics of Leopold (1949), Abram (1997) and Haraway (2008), which in different ways actualises and frames the observed teaching. Leopolds “Land Ethic” perspective opens for a non-anthropocentric orientation towards altruistic environmental responsibility, Abram’s “more-than-human” concept both serves as a guiding analytical category and a fundamental expression of post-human ethical extensionism. Haraway’s “sharing suffering”, i.e. “staying with the trouble” allows for a discussion of the parameters of non-anthropomorphic, non-mimetic ethical responsibility. The different approaches open for reflections of the possibilities and limits of current environmental ethics education, and how teaching can navigate aspects of ethical-political anthropocentrism inherent in education more generally.

My paper proposal furthermore has a critical-hermeneutical (Ricoeur, 1981) orientation in that it is presumed that the teachers assumptions, conceptual operationalisations and legitimations for their choices will inform and affect their resulting teaching, such as what role the human is ascribed in relation to nature by the teachers, be it stewardship (eg. Jonas, 1984), kinship (eg. Kimmerer, 2020) or isolation.