Investigating the relation between education and societal change in the face of sustainability issues : exploring methodological possibilities and blind spots
In the context of sustainability challenges, public pedagogy is faced with a tension between a radical pedagogical perspective – emphasising the risks involved in reducing education to an instrument for predetermined societal change – and a radical view on the urgent need for a transition towards a more sustainable world (Block et al., 2018). This paper explores the hypothesis that counter posing radical pedagogy and radical sustainability falls into the trap of creating an apparent contradiction. It may be precisely the care for the pedagogical – i.e. for creating ‘free time’ (scholè) to study matters of concern such as sustainability challenges (Masschelein & Simons, 2013) – that opens up a space for more radical perspectives on societal change. With this contribution, we aim to take the idea of education as a radically emancipatory and transformational practice (Säfström, 2018) out of the realm of theoretical debates and turn it into an object of empirical investigation.
Therefore, we explore the potential of cross-fertilisation between different modes of investigating the relationship between education and societal change in the face of sustainability issues. Research literature reveals an interest in the pedagogical in relation to sustainable development that takes varied forms, ranging from the micro-level of the meaning-making of/between individual people, over the meso-level of organisational learning to the macro-level of sustainability transitions as a matter of learning-by-doing. Diverse frameworks for the empirical analysis of such pedagogical processes have been developed and applied. Pragmatist educational theory, for instance, has inspired the development of transactional analytical methods for in-situ analyses of meaning-making (cognitive but also ethical, aesthetical, emotional, embodied, etc.) in educational practices – e.g. classroom interactions, deliberative discussions, etc. (Östman & Öhman 2010). Another example is Cultural Historical Activity Theory which is employed to investigate how reflexivity, agency and contradictions function as key factors for innovation and changes of activity system through expansive learning (Engeström, 2015).
This paper explores the potential and limits of diverse modes of analysis, discusses possibilities for cross-fertilisation by combining different perspectives and identifies methodological and empirical blind spots in the current state of the art. So doing, it hopes to contribute to the much-needed further conceptualisation of and empirical research on the relation between education and societal change in view of sustainable development (Van Poeck et al. 2018).
Block, T., Goeminne, G. & Van Poeck, K. 2018. Balancing the urgency and wickedness of sustainability challenges: three maxims for post-normal education. Environmental Education Research, 24(9), 1424-1439.
Engeström, Y. 2015. Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Masschelein, J. & Simons, M. 2013. In defence of the school. A public issue. Leuven: E-ducation, Culture & Society Publishers.
Östman, L. & Öhman, J. 2010. A Transactional Approach to Learning, Paper presented at John Dewey Society, AERA Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, April 30 - May 4 2010.
Säfström, C.A. 2018. Liveable life, educational theory and the imperative of constant change. European Educational Research Journal, 17(5), 621-630
Van Poeck, K., Östman, L. & Block, T. (2018) Opening up the black box of learning-by-doing in sustainability transitions. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions pre-published online: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2018.12.00
