Environmental and sustainability education meets the reality of schooling

Considering the current state of our planet, the need for a vibrant environmental and sustainability education (ESE) is more pressing than ever.

However, ESE finds itself caught in a tension between two educational logics, an existential one and an instrumental one.

The existential logic of ESE content opens for profound questions about what future the students will face, which can bring strong emotional reactions into the classroom. Simultaneously, sustainability issues are being taught within a system characterized by an instrumental logic.

This logic comes with accountability of teaching and requires that both teachers and students adhere to goals and deliver measurable outcomes.

This project aims to develop a teaching model that aids educators in handling existential sustainability issues within the context of instrumental schooling.

In order to do this, we will generate empirical knowledge on how the two logics are addressed in educational policy and how teachers and students handle the tension between them.

By drawing on pragmatist theory, the project will analyze three data sets: education policy (data set A), interviews with teachers and students (data set B), and teachers’ written lesson plans and student essays (data set C). This provides us with an empirical base from which a teaching model will be constructed.

This model will entail concrete recommendations, taking both the existential content of ESE and institutional conditions of schooling into consideration.