Nordic contemporary art education and the environment: Constructing an epistemological platform for Art Education for Sustainable Development (AESD)

Abstract

How can art educators address questions of environmental sustainability, accepting to be ethically normative but avoiding becoming dogmatic? How can the complex 'pool' of knowledge generated in and through art education research become useful in working with these questions, which many of us find overwhelmingly difficult? AESD -Art Education for Sustainable Developmentis a concept coined for this article with the intention of bringing environmental problems onto the agenda. In an attempt to provoke the necessary discussion about environmental sustainability in art education, the article examines selected texts from recent Nordic research in order to build an 'epistemological platform' that might function as a research-based 'tool' for discussing environmental issues. The article is organized in four sections, which refer to the four 'cornerstones' of the platform, where each cornerstone corresponds to a recent current in art education. These currents, as defined by the author, are: critical art education, poststructuralist strategies, visual culture pedagogy, and community oriented visual practices. Using selected Nordic texts as material for the analysis, the epistemological perspective of each current is briefly presented and its relationship to evironmental questions is discussed. In the final discussion, eight keywords are presented: praxis, change, performance, reflexivity, visuality, event, situatedness and collaboration. When put together, these concepts offer a dynamic picture of the 'pool' of ideas offered by contemporary Nordic and international research, which will be useful for 'performing' AESD both as teaching practices and as research.

Systematic Review of Education for Sustainable Development at an Early Stage: Cornerstones and Pedagogical Approaches for Teacher Professional Development

“…Art-based approaches are considered an important feature of ESD applications specifically for ECE. Illeris [47], for instance, advocates AESD (art + ESD) to foster environmental care by helping to break cultural assumptions that hinder action, being "a driver of critical and reflective thinking" [47] (p. 91). Therefore, it can contribute to the understanding of harsh and complex sustainability issues among young children.…”

Locative Meaning-making: An Arts-based Approach to Learning for Sustainable Development

“…In her popular book -Not for profit: why democracy needs the humanities‖ Martha Nussbaum [27] argues that education and learning must reconnect to the arts and humanities in order to give students the capacity to be true democratic citizens of their countries and the world. Illeris points at valuable overlaps between (Nordic) art education and ESD [28]. She introduces four cornerstones in which art-education might contribute to achieving ESD competencies, such as its capacity to increase students sensitivity to environment.…”

Developing design literacy for sustainability

“…The perceived perspectives in research concern the possibilities of youths' development of design competence for democratic participation in sustainable development and consumption by experiencing and reflecting upon the design and crafts practice (Digranes & Fauske, 2010;Illeris, 2012;Lutnaes, 2015a, 2015bLutnaes & Fallingen, 2017;Nielsen, 2009;Nielsen & Braenne, 2013, Nielsen & Digranes, 2007. Empirical studies among teachers in Art and Crafts concern perspectives on cultivation of eco-literacy (Fallingen, 2014) and sustainable perspectives on material use (Idland, 2015).…”