Conference Agenda

‘Hope’ is often seen as an important dimension of education and teaching, especially in dark times. Unsurprisingly, in the context of environmental and sustainability education (ESE) the crucial role of hope has been discussed among many scholars (e.g., Ojala, 2012, 2015; Kelsey, 2016; Pihkala, 2017). Critical voices also question the risks that evolve around hope. False or naïve hope have been discussed, and some scholars present concepts such as constructive hope (Ojala, 2012) and anti-colonial hope (Zembylas, 2022). In this symposium, we want to focus on the role of hopelessness as an affective relation in shaping a more sustainable future.

We identify, until now, a lack of scholarly discussion on ‘hopelessness’ and how to include it consciously in ESE. Silencing hopelessness, seeing it as something undesired or to be avoided altogether, does not come without risk. A dualist perspective like this may involve a judgement on what comes to be perceived as the ideal and desired (see also Ideland, 2019). Who is the hopeless body in teaching and education and what is shaping the bodies of hopelessness?

At the Nordic Educational Research Association conference in 2025, we invited scholars to discuss the potential of a pedagogy of hopelessness in a symposium. We pondered whether the risk of neoliberal instrumentalization of hope is so great that educators should think about using other concepts and if we need a functional conceptualisation of hopelessness itself. We suggested that one difficulty of speaking of hopelessness is that we remain dancing with and around hope, instead of staying with the hopeless.

The aim of this symposium, then, is to go further in conceptualising hopelessness itself and to explore what to do with hopelessness in the context of ESE.

We ask the following research questions:

How can ‘hopelessness’ be conceptualised/defined in relation to ESE?

What does ‘hopelessness’ do educationally/pedagogically?

How can ‘hopelessness’ be given space in educational/pedagogical practice, with which aims, and for which purpose?

This symposium is not against hope neither is hopelessness emphasised as something to strive for or to resist. It is an educational reality, however, as more and more young people name hopelessness as a companion in dark times (Hickman et al. 2021), and we wish to explore how to involve it more intently in ESE.

economic, and ecological crisis. At the same time, approaches to hope tend to conceptualise it as an individual psychological resource, often measured and cultivated at the level of subject (Snyder, 2002). However, such approaches risk obscuring the social and relational conditions through which hope emerges, and the ways in which hope may be constrained, unevenly distributed, or accompanied by experiences of hopelessness (Freire, 1994; Pleeging et al., 2022; Webb, 2013). This presentation takes the Finnish comprehensive school system as a theoretically productive site for examining this tension. While compulsory education in Finland is organised as a formally egalitarian system, adolescents lived conditions and well-being are increasingly shaped by social and material inequalities (Hautala et al., 2022). This coexistence of institutional equality and differentiated life conditions raises critical questions about how future orientations and hope are articulated under conditions of perceived educational equality. Drawing on qualitative texts from the Framtidshopp project, in which adolescents (and children) aged 9 – 15 were invited to write about their future dreams, the presentation approaches hope as a socially mediated and relational phenomenon rather than an individual trait. The analysis is informed by Webb’s (Webb, 2013) conceptualisation of different modes of hope, and by Freire’s insistence that hope must remain grounded in lived realities rather than abstract optimism (Freire, 1994). Rather than treating future dreams as mere projections or aspirations, the study reads adolescents’ imagined futures as expressions of their present conditions. By attending to how different forms of hope – as well as tensions, absences, and limits of hope – are articulated in these narratives, the presentation advances a theoretical argument about the fragility and contextual nature of hope within formally egalitarian educational settings. Rather than resolving or instrumentalising hope as a pedagogical ideal, the study contributes to critical discussions of hope by foregrounding adolescents’ own expressions of becoming in relation to unequal social, relational, and material conditions.

Freire, P. (with Araújo Freire, A. M., & Barr, R. R.). (1994). Pedagogy of hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum. Hautala, H., Lehti, H., & Kallio, J. (2022). Family background and classroom belonging among adolescent students in Finland. Child Indicators Research, 15(3), 863–883. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-021-09894-1 Pleeging, E., van Exel, J., & Burger, M. (2022). Characterizing Hope: An Interdisciplinary Overview of the Characteristics of Hope. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 17(3), 1681–1723. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-021-09967-x Snyder, C. R. (2002). TARGET ARTICLE: Hope Theory: Rainbows in the Mind. Psychological Inquiry, 13(4), 249–275. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1304_01 Webb, D. (2013). Pedagogies of Hope. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 32(4), 397–414. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-012-9336-1

Hope as a concept can be understood as an existential prerequisite for establishing both educational and pedagogical approaches to environmental and climate change issues (Dahlbeck, 2014; Finnegan, 2023; Zipory, 2021). Yet it can also be framed as an individual illusion that constantly are at risk of being coopeted by neo-liberal interest in status quo and the continued destruction of the world we live in (Lysgaard, Bengtsson, & Laugesen, 2019; Saari & Mullen, 2020). The presentation relates to foundational aspects of hope and hopelessness through two overall arguments. 1) both love and sustainability can be understood as historical and contextual constructs, and they can lead to positive engagement with oneself and the world, but also to the opposite. A Zizekian take on critique of ideology (Žižek, 2009) illustrates this point and underline how love and sustainability both has the possibility to install meaning and a sense of direction in the individual subject, educator or learner, but also that they carry the pedagogical risk of being too much, demanding the impossible in the face of a messy everyday life and thus risk to lead to different variations of interpassivity, pseudo action and false-action instead of grappling with the challenges and potentials that the ideals harbor (Lysgaard, 2018). 2) Secondly the presentation argue that this should not stop us engaging with either of these ideals, but that we should engage with them in a less cynical way, and risk pedagogical courage. This leads to perspectives on how the two notions might benefit each other to navigate relationships between hope and hopelessness. Drawing on the ideal of love highlight that the intimacy, understanding, wonders, but also challenges, grief, sorrow and heart-ache that such a notion entails (Grau & Smuts, 2024) makes it no less abstract and messy than sustainability. But, we all know of love, and following Kirkegaard the potential of love is not for the few, but a human condition that remains central and elusive as it avoids ownership and static positions in the reverberating between a person and the world (Kirkegaard, 2009). When sustainability repeatedly demands too much, and our educational efforts to support a sustainable development, seemingly leads to hopelessness, we should take a page from the ideal of love and Kirkegaard’s understanding of its challenges and remain both humble and caring in our approach to dealing with impossible ideals such as love and especially sustainability in an educational setting.

Dahlbeck, J. (2014). Hope and fear in education for sustainable development. Critical Studies in Education, 55(2), 154-169. Finnegan, W. (2023). Educating for hope and action competence: a study of secondary school students and teachers in England. Environmental Education Research, 29(11), 1617-1636. Grau, C., & Smuts, A. (2024). The Oxford handbook of the philosophy of love: Oxford University Press. Kirkegaard, S. (2009). Works of Love (G. Pattison, Trans.): C.A. Reitzel. Lysgaard, J. A. (2018). Learning from Bad Practice in Environmental and Sustainability Education: Peter Lang. Lysgaard, J. A., Bengtsson, S., & Laugesen, M. H.-L. (2019). Dark Pedagogy. New York: Palgrave. Saari, A., & Mullen, J. (2020). Dark places: environmental education research in a world of hyperobjects. Environmental Education Research, 26(9-10), 1466-1478. doi:10.1080/13504622.2018.1522618 Zipory, O. (2021). For an education with no hope. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 55(2), 383-396. Žižek, S. (2009). The sublime object of ideology: Verso Books.

After reports of crossing Earth’s first climate ‘tipping point’, warm-water coral reefs’ dieback, were released in October 2025 (Lenton et al., 2025), questions of learning to live with the climate crisis and hope(lessness) are more evident than ever (Røkenes & Jornet, 2026). Facing this grave situation and learning about unsustainability both inside and outside of educational institutions often evokes divergent emotional and affective responses. Furthermore, sustainability is ethically laden and may involve conflicts of interest which might be tough to deal with pedagogically (Urberg, 2023), especially since not all interests can always be satisfied (Marres, 2005). Moreover, learning to live with both climate change and with the sustainability transitions already under way necessitates a transformation of affective norms (Verlie, 2021) to be able to deal with painful losses due to both (Bogner et al. 2021). In this presentation, we explore in dialogue teacher education (Heikkilä & Wolff, 2025) and processes of facilitating sustainability initiatives (Höhle & Van Poeck, 2025) as crucial for navigating the challenges of (un)sustainability and for addressing the difficult emotional experiences that arise. Drawing on the ideas of the feminist scholar Sara Ahmed (2014) on emotions, our two studies consider hope and hopelessness –hope(lessness)– as co-existing relational and emotional experiences. Emotions are not merely individual, nor only social, but they come into being in relations and are dependent upon the political, socio-cultural, and historical context (Ahmed, 2014). The dialogue is based on insights from two research projects based on the observation of university-level teacher education in Finland and informal learning processes in sustainability initiatives in Belgium. We engage in a scholarly dialogue across formal and informal education and national contexts to find linkages regarding how emotions and hope(lessness) are intertwined. Our results suggest that a pedagogical process of questioning, attending to, and reflecting upon loss and hopelessness requires space, time and collective commitment, both in the context of teacher education but also in the facilitation of sustainability initiatives. We further identify a pedagogical risk that hope may be seen as an educational content to be attained, while neglecting that hope is not always a pleasant or comfortable emotional experience but rather a process that requires emotional labour. We explore how engaging with hope(lessness) can have an educative potential in that people broaden their understanding of the world and their own values and actions.

Ahmed, S. (2014). The cultural politics of emotion (2nd ed.). Edinburgh University Press. Bogner, K., Kump, B., Beekman, M., & Wittmayer, J. (2024). Coping with transition pain: An emotions perspective on phase-outs in sustainability transitions. EIST, 50, 100806. Heikkilä, E., & Wolff, L.-A. (2025). The pedagogical role of emotions and social sustainability in teacher education. Acta Didactica Norden, 19(2), 26 pages. Höhle, J., & Van Poeck, K. (2025). Studying feelings in action: An analytical framework for empirical analyses of affect in sustainability transitions. EIST, 57, 101031. Lenton, T. M., Milkoreit, M., Willcock, S., Abrams, J. F., Armstrong McKay, D. I., Buxton, J. E., … Dennis, D. (eds), (2025). The Global Tipping Points Report 2025. University of Exeter, Exeter, UK. The Global Tipping Marres, N. (2005). No issue, no public: Democratic deficits after the displacement of politics. Røkenes, H., & Jornet, A. (2026). Affective Contradictions and Narratives of Change: A Critical, Cultural-Historical Approach to Hope and Action in Education for Sustainability. Science Education, 110(1), 291–306. Urberg, L. (2025). Conflicts of interest in environmental and sustainability education. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 1–14. Verlie, B. (2021). Learning to Live with Climate Change: From Anxiety to Transformation. Routledge.