Critical thinking as room for subjectification in Education for Sustainable Development

Abstract

Issues of sustainability are complex and often steeped with ethical and political questions without predefined or general answers. This paper deals with how secondary and upper secondary teachers discuss these complex issues, by analysing their aims for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). With inspiration from discourse theory, their articulations about students as political subjects are analysed. Critical thinking emerged as a nodal point in teachers' discussions. In this study critical thinking is articulated as having various qualitative meanings related to different epistemological views. On one hand, critical thinking is articulated to invite room for subjectification; but on the other hand, room for subjectification is challenged when critical thinking is articulated through the educational aims of qualification and socialisation. A consequence of changing epistemological view might be that political and ethical issues take a back seat.Keywords: education for sustainable development, environmental education, critical thinking, subjectification, functions of education Introduction and backgroundQuestions of sustainability pose challenges to education. What does this perspective mean when considering the purpose of education? The relationship between knowledge, politics and ethics is complex and sensitive, and one might ask how education should deal with questions imbedded in political and ethical interpretations. Should ESD work as an integrated aim of education, and what happens when it does?These questions, which have been asked for several decades, have been recently accentuated through the UN Decade of ESD (Jickling 2003;Scott and Gough 2003;Stevenson 2007; Jickling and Walls 2008). These are important questions to consider, because when we ask why we educate and for what purpose we keep the democratic part of education alive (Biesta 2009a).Among educational content for sustainable development, we find issues surrounding climate change, the use of natural resources, justice, human rights and democracy. It allows for the students' competence to act in the future and the vision of action competence (i.e., the vision of developing reflecting individuals with an awareness of conflicting interests). A broad and interdisciplinary obligation, Scott and Gough (2003) frame sustainability and learning as an issue of complexity, uncertainty, risk and necessity.The initiative and mission of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2004Development ( -2014 can be found on the website of UNESCO (UNESCO 2012, www.unesco.org):

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