Leif Östman

Education for Sustainable Development and Normativity: A Transactional Analysis of Moral Meaning-Making and Companion Meanings in Classroom Communication.

The purpose of the present article is to present and illustrate two different ways of analysing the normativity and discursivity of classroom communication during education for sustainable development (ESD). The two types of analysis can provide important knowledge for discussions of ESD in relation to morals and democracy. Both methods are based on pragmatism and the later works of Wittgenstein. The first approach was developed to examine the relationship between cultural and psychological processes in environmental ethical meaning‐making. It draws on the endeavours of sociocultural research and cultural psychology to take the individual into account, or in other words, the intra‐personal dimension of meaning‐making, which is not usually the case in the analysis of ESD. The second method relates to the normativity of ESD. Dewey refers to the apparently implicit socialisation taking place during education as ‘collateral learning’. We refer to the content included in subsidiary forms of learning as companion meaning, which either follows on automatically when teaching knowledge content, or becomes collateral learning when one learns scientific meanings. Such meanings can, for example, be concerned with the nature of knowledge and peoples relations to nature.

Education for sustainable development in early childhood education: a review of the research literature

The aim of the study is to describe and analyse research articles relating to the subject of education for sustainable development (ESD) for early childhood education (ECE), published during the years 1996–2013. This is done by answering three specific questions: (1) How is ESD defined by researchers in ECE? (2) What are the major research inquiries and results? (3) What does the research say about young children acting for change in relation to sustainability? Our analysis identified two different definitions of ESD: first, as a threefold approach to education based on questions concerning education about, in and for the environment; and, second, as an approach to education that includes three interrelated dimensions: economic, social and environmental. Two major research areas are identified in this study. The first area relates to how teachers understand ESD, while the second area focuses on how ESD can be implemented in educational practice. During the period studied, the research has evolved from teaching children facts about the environment and sustainability issues to educating children to act for change. This new approach reveals a more competent child who can think for him- or herself and make well-considered decisions. The decisions are made by investigating and participating in critical discussions about alternative ways of acting for change.

University Students During Practical Work: Can We Make the Learning Process Intelligible?

In this paper we suggest and apply a mechanism for the learning process based on Wittgenstein’s later work, pragmatism and sociocultural perspectives. The theory is used to analyse recordings of student discourse during a practical an insect morphology. These are the first results of a research project on student discourse during practical work in the laboratory and in the field. The project is intended as a long-term study of biology and chemistry students during their first three years at Uppsala University.

Globalisation and education for sustainable development: exploring the global in motion

The article explores education for sustainable development (ESD) as a policy concept in different spaces and how it is re-articulated as part of a process of globalisation. The objective is to explore empirically an alternative set of logics in order to conceive of this process of globalisation. With this objective in mind, the article investigates articulations of ESD and sustainable development in Vietnamese and Thai policy-making, and reflects upon how these articulations can be seen to relate to globalisation. In so doing, it addresses concerns about the globalising potential of ESD within the field of environmental education research, and aims to open up for an alternative understanding of the processes associated with the rearticulation of ESD in different national education policy settings. The alternative conception that is put forward promotes an understanding of these re-articulations of ESD as contingent, opening up a space for contestation and counter-hegemonic articulations.

The creative use of companion values in environmental education and education for sustainable development: exploring the educative moment

Our paper addresses the emergence and evolution of values in educational settings. It builds upon and extends earlier work on companion meanings to develop a theory of the creative use of companion values and meanings in education. The recognition of companion values in educational practices highlight epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic transactions that occur in ways we characterize as ‘other than modern.’ Introducing the idea of educative moments allows us to identify situations where value spheres interpenetrate and interrogate each other in the meaning-making of students and teachers. These moments occur when students suddenly experience companion meanings and values such that teacher and student must deliberate together rather than the teacher dictating some dominating epistemological, ethical, or aesthetic value. This way, it is possible to accommodate critical and creative reflection in education where new values can emerge or evolve. We illustrate the theory by empirical examples from classroom conversations.

The political tendency in environmental and sustainability education

This article presents a categorisation of the different situations in which the political dimension of environmental and sustainability education can be handled and experienced in practice: the ‘political tendency’. Using a methodology inspired by Wittgenstein’s user perspective on language, we empirically identified situations that express the political tendency by looking for language games centred around the question of how to organise social life, recognising that this inevitably requires decision-making about different and competing alternatives. Classifying these situations resulted in a typology (the political tendency) that distinguishes ‘Democratic participation’, ‘Political reflection’, ‘Political deliberation’ (sub-divided into ‘Normative deliberation’, ‘Consensus-oriented deliberation’ and ‘Conflict-oriented deliberation’) and ‘Political moment’. Next, we discuss the developed typology from an educative perspective, showing that the distinguished situations in the political tendency differ as to how they enable the foregrounding and backgrounding of different educational goals: preparation, socialisation and person-formation (i.e. identification and subjectification as perspective shifting and subjectification as dismantling).

Creating space for ‘the political’ in environmental and sustainability education practice: a Political Move Analysis of educators’ actions

Abstract Literature about education’s role in realising a more sustainable world emphasises the importance of acknowledging democratic and political challenges in environmental and sustainability education (ESE). This article offers an empirically grounded theoretical and methodological contribution to future research on how ‘the political’ is introduced, handled and experienced in ESE practice. It presents an analytical method, ‘Political Move Analysis’, for investigating how educators’ actions open-up or close down a space for the political in learners’ meaning-making. The method has been developed through empirical case studies that allowed to identify a variety of ‘politicising’ and ‘de-politicising moves’ performed by educators. Through these moves, educators can engage in very diverse teaching practices which differently affect the direction of people’s meaning-making. These findings are theoretically discussed in view of how to understand the entanglement of the educative and the political in ESE. Prospects for future research and for inspiring teaching practice are pointed out.

Teaching Traditions in Science Teachers’ Practices and the Introduction of National Testing

ABSTRACT Our main interest in this article is to explore whether Swedish teachers changed their teaching and assessment practices in relation to the new national tests in science education that were introduced 2009. Data was collected using a web-distributed questionnaire, which was answered by 407 teachers. The concept of teaching traditions is used to capture patterns of what is emphasized by teachers in terms of goals and content in teaching and the design of the questionnaire was based on the concept of curriculum emphases. The results show two distinct groups of focus, which are compared with two traditions within science education: the Academic and the Moral tradition. The main content where teaching has been changed is in making science more applied than before, where applied not only means the application of science knowledge to practical technical issues, but also to moral and political issues.

Science Education Versus Science in the Academy: Questions - Discussion - Perspectives

The paper seeks to address the troubling issues we, as science educators, encounter when coexisting with scientist colleagues. Significant disagreement exists regarding what constitutes an appropriate science learning experience, what constitutes legitimate research, how science should be structured and taught and even who should be allowed to teach or learn science. From a cultural perspective we should try to understand better ourselves and those we work with, from a historical perspective: identify the origins of the aforementioned issues, from a philosophical, epistemological, and ontological perspective: determine where the common ground exists between conflicting faculty, so that we may make more significant progress in our efforts to improve science teaching and learning as well as teacher education programs. We think that we should try to reflect on our own professional contexts within science departments or education departments. Ultimately, we should probe the institution of higher education, the very place where future teachers, scientists, and scientific literates learn science. This is where the most significant impact potentially resides for education reform. For this is where the foundations begin. If conflicts can not be meaningfully resolved at the university level, the products of that environment will inevitably perpetuate the dysfunction we observe in schools, where the children of the present and future will be no different than of the past.

A Method and Model for Studying the Learning of Artistic Techniques: Analyzing Sculptural Expression in School Sloyd

While Chap. 3 emphasizes the empirical investigation of learning an embodied langauge-game in a mobility practice, this chapter explores how Dewey’s aesthetics can further our methodology by investigating sculptural expression in a production practice. Against the background of the primacy of the aesthetic encounter, creative action, aesthetic appreciation, and especially the creation of artistically expressive meanings, this chapter develops the analytical model of SAR. The SAR model and the PEA method are used to analyze sculptural expression in school sloyd. Since sloyd is approached as an embodied production practice, the analyses enable explorations of learning as it moves from an instrumental learning of a body technique to an artistic expression through a body technique and through the material worked with. Thus, the connection between the learning of body techniques and artistic expressions and the formation and transformation of the self are investigated.