Sustainability for Whom? : The Politics of Imagining Environmental Change in Education

Abstract

Global initiatives regarding environmental change have increasingly become part of political agendas and of our collective imagination. In order to form sustainable societies, education is considered crucial by organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union. But how is the notion of sustainability imagined and formed in educational practices? What does sustainability make possible, and whom does it involve? These critical questions are not often asked in educational research on sustainability.This study suggests that the absence of critical questions in sustainability education is part of a contemporary post-political framing of environmental issues. In order to re-politicize sustainability in education, this study critically explores how education-as an institution and a practice that is supposed to foster humans-responds to environmental change. The aim is to explore how sustainability is formed in education, and to discuss how these formations relate to ideas of what education is, and whom it is for. This interdisciplinary study uses theories and concepts from cultural studies, feminist theory, political theory, and philosophy of education to study imaginaries of the unknown, nonhuman world in the context of education. The focus of the empirical investigation is on teacher education in Sweden, and more precisely on those responsible for teaching the future generations of teachers -the teacher instructors. With help from empirical findings from focus groups, the study asks questions about the ontological, political, and ethical potential and risk of bringing the unknown Other into education.

Making the Unsustainable Sustainable: How Swedish Secondary School Teachers Deal with Sustainable Development in Their Teaching

“…Thus, according to the informants' implicit logic, teaching about sustainable development is not only deeply politicised. It also entirely excludes self-reflection on this point, and works according to the idea that there is a prevailing consensus that established socioeconomic and political conditions should be the obvious-or even only-starting point for teaching within this field in Swedish schools [49]. The reason for this is probably that teaching on sustainable development is complex, as it involves not only nature, but also the whole "technosystem" of societal markets and administrations and the technologies that they involve [44].…”

Introduktion till postkvalitativ metodologi

“…På ett liknande sätt visar Hanna Sjögren (2016) hur fokusgrupper kan destabilisera den maktrelation mellan intervjuare och intervjuad som ofta uppstår i en individuell intervju. Sjögren (2016) använder i fokusgruppintervjuer olika typer av stimulusmaterial, som exempelvis dikter och bilder. Dessa material i sig bidrar till nya diskussioner och kan också öppna upp för svar och diskussioner som enbart frågor ibland inte kan göra.…”

“…Med utgångspunkt i en postkvalitativ metodologi kan således materialen förstås som performativa aktörer som på nya och andra sätt bidrar till produktionen av kunskap. Något som blir särskilt intressant kopplat till postkvalitativa tankegångar är hur Sjögren (2016) betonar att urvalet av dikter och bilder kan förstås utifrån Haraways (2008a) situeringsbegrepp. Själva praktiken att välja -och välja bort -visst material som presenteras för fokusgruppen blir på detta sätt en inbjudan till deltagarna att få förståelse för forskarens föreställningar om det studerade fenomenet.…”

Thinking with the world – to explore the becoming of phenomena

“…The context for contempoary explorations about how we can think with the world is shaped by global challenges, especially in respect of climatic changes and environmental degradation (Staunaes & Krejsler, 2013;Sjögren 2016, Bergstedt, 2017aJuelskjaer, 2020). One of the reasons for this is that Vitruvian man of the Anthropocene (Braidotti, 2013) is central to all knowledge creation based upon dualist divisions between subject and object and between people and matter (Barad 2007, Braidotti 2013, Grusin 2015.…”