The potential of including the student perspective in sustainable education: Symposium Part 1: Young people’s future – between burn out and fire

Symposium abstract: The symposium centers on how Young people imagine the future and what it implies for their present dealing with contemporary life in an age of environmental disaster. Through taking outset in students’ perspectives, the symposium seeks to nuance the understanding of student’s relation and imagination of themselves in relation to or as part of a sustainable future. Further it deals with what can be done educationally to support cultivation of young people’s future expectations in constructive ways, for instance through playful classrooms and/or other kinds of research and educational playspaces (Rousell & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2022) and/or more flourishing in our schools and the use of outdoor spaces. Central questions are: To what extend and how is it possible and desirable to support young people to foster hope and/or positive imaginations about the future? To what extend and how is it possible and desirable so educate young people of today to become eco-democratic citizens and creators of a life-friendly society of tomorrow? To what extend is such aims and democratic education in need of becoming rethought in connection with eco-democracy? (Lundmark, 1998; Pickering et. al, 2020). Thus, prepare the young generation to support and achieve diverse, democratic social, and ecologically just sustainable societies – living within the Earth's carrying capacity – eco-democracy might be an important perspective helpful to think of and understanding educational change, but also enacting change in educational practice supporting living and learning democracy, young people's contemporary and imaginary future. The papers present different angles on this. The aim of the symposium is therefore to bring the papers into a shared conversation about educational research that focuses on young people, their perspectives, and how to respond educationally to the challanges of growing up on a damaged planet, in an ecologically unsustainable society, where many, not least young people dream of something better, yet risk becoming depressed, apathetic or anxious about the future, in the Anthropocene age we now live in (Paulsen, et. al. 2022).


Part 1: Student 6th grade:“We’ve got to take care of the earth [...] but it is as if the world just crumbles through one's fingers - like sand”

The world's current environmental and climate crises are shaping the future in which our children grow up, which makes knowledge about how primary schools can and should navigate this subject a matter of both existential and societal friction. This paper investigates how students understand, experience and relate to climate and sustainability issues, and how this informs their view on sustainability education. Despite being the primary concern in education, students’ perspectives often figure in the background of theory and research on sustainability education (Brückner et al., 2023; Payne, 1997; Rickinson, 2001). Therefore, this paper aims to foreground the student perspective by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at three primary-level schools in Denmark that explicitly incorporate sustainability into their teaching and school development (CHORA, 2024). Based on ten focus group interviews with around 30 students in 5th-6th grade, including participatory observation in different educational settings in and outside the classroom. These empirical findings are combined with focus group interviews using creative methods that explore various ways for students to express their experiences of sustainability education, which led to several examples that contain both local-global, here-and-now, and future perspectives. Building on this, this paper presents key findings and themes on how students participate in, perceive, and experience sustainability education. To explore which frictions and potentials arise through students’ meaning-making processes, expressions of actions, and connection-making, etc., with a particular interest in examples of how different forms of we-stories are illustrating often taken-for-granted categories as e.g. we at this school, we as a group, or we as humans (Verlie 2019; Lehtonen et al., 2019; Gulløv & Højlund, 2015; Gilliam & Gulløv, 2022). Centring the student motivates an examination of both the child and children and their context, and a curiosity towards different representations of sustainability that encapsulate and illustrate the entangled, transnational, and complex interconnectedness of the children’s world-building. Specifically, looking at examples of fire-fighting as a concern of the students, both in a symbolic and practical sense, as their descriptions, stories and illustrations about sustainability education connect and contain notions of flourishing nature and burning factories, this presentation will present a qualitative perspective on how to nuance the understanding of which different aspects and factors influence sustainability education and the student’s relation and imagination of themselves in relation to or as part of a sustainable future.

Keywords:
Student perspective, primary- and secondary education, Education quality, ethnographic fieldwork

References

Brückner, M., Lysgaard, J., & Elf, N. (2023). Dimensions of Quality in Environmental and Sustainability Education Research.

CHORA. (2024). 2030 SKOLER Verdensmålscertificering af uddannelsesinstitutioner. Retrieved 25th of January 2024 from https://chora2030.dk/verdensmaalscertificering-af-skoler/

Gilliam, L., & Gulløv, E. (2016). Children of the Welfare State: Civilising Practices in Schools, Childcare and Families (Vol. 57734). Pluto Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1jktscx

Gilliam, L., & Gulløv, E. (2022). Children as potential - a window to cultural ideals, anxieties and conflicts. Children's geographies, 20(3), 311-323. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2019.1648760

Gulløv, E., & Højlund, S. (2015). Feltarbejde blandt børn : metodologi og etik i etnografisk børneforskning (1. udgave. ed.). Gyldendal.

Lehtonen, A., Salonen, A. O., & Cantell, H. (2019). Climate Change Education: A New Approach for a World of Wicked Problems. In Sustainability, Human Well-Being, and the Future of Education (pp. 339-374). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78580-6_11

Payne, P. (1997). Embodiment and Environmental Education. Environmental Education Research, 3(2), 133-153. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350462970030203

Pink, S., & Morgan, J. (2013). Short-Term Ethnography: Intense Routes to Knowing: Short-Term Ethnography. Symbolic interaction, 36(3), 351-361. https://doi.org/10.1002/symb.66

Rickinson, M. (2001). Learners and Learning in Environmental Education: A critical review of the evidence. Environmental Education Research, 7(3), 207-320. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620120065230