Symposium 'Teaching and Learning in the Face of Wicked Socio-Ecological Problems (Part 2): Contributions from Empirical Research'

Often characterised as 'unstructured' (Hoppe 2011), 'post-normal' (e.g. Funtowicz & Ravetz 1993) or 'wicked' (e.g. Pryshlakivsky & Searcy 2013) problems, complex sustainability issues such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, resource depletion, gentrification, etc. prove difficult to solve. Their consequences are far-reaching yet unpredictable. Expert knowledge is incomplete, fragmented, and uncertain, giving rise to scientific controversies. Furthermore, social and political controversy arises because of a lack of agreement on norms and values at stake and on the acceptability of goals and solutions. Neither the existing institutions, frameworks and routines for decision-making nor the application of the available expertise appear capable of democratically tackling such problems. All the same, the sense of urgency surrounding these issues that drastically affect our planet and its inhabitants continues to grow. The pursuit of a more sustainable world is one of the most important societal challenges today and – given its wicked character – a challenge that requires a trans-disciplinary engagement with the issues at stake. In this context, policy-makers as well as scholars repeatedly argue for 'learning our way out' of unsustainability (Finger & Asún 2001) and explicitly call on educational institutions to contribute to this endeavour. Yet, also for education such wicked socio-ecological problems bring about major challenges. When the required and available knowledge is uncertain and the desirability of proposed solutions is contested, education cannot be reduced to a matter of teaching and learning the 'proper' attitudes, knowledge, behaviour, skills, etc. Environmental and sustainability education (ESE) researchers have emphasised the absence of a universal ethical foundation for sustainable development as well as of an absolute conception of scientific truth. Questions and challenges emerging, then, are e.g. how to deal with unstable knowledge and controversy in educational processes (Ashley 2000)? How to move beyond moralising instruction without falling into undue anything-goes-relativism (Sund & Öhman 2014; Van Poeck et al. 2015)? How to foster creativity (Garrison et al. 2015) and encourage 'thinking and doing things that have not been done before' (Jickling & Wals 2012)? Etc. Highlighting different aspects of such educational challenges and bringing together varied national perspectives, the contributors to this symposium will address this topic from theoretical, methodological as well as empirical points of view. In this second part of the symposium, we focus on empirical ESE research contributions about teaching and learning in the face of wicked socio-ecological problems. McKenzie and Reid draw on large scale comparative study of sustainability in formal education to address the question how sustainability issues are conceptualized, practiced, resisted, and addressed within and across places, and why that matters for educational research, policy, and pedagogy. Lee examined children's perceptions and articulations of changing climates in primary schools in the UK, Mongolia, Mexico and Alaska and describes the uncovered distinctions in the way that children in different countries talk about the wicked socio-ecological problem, climate change. Læssøe, Rahbek and Lysgaard investigate and describe how future wicked problems influence Folk High school teacher thinking on their teaching and how new approaches and methods emerge through spaces for knowledge sharing, self-reflection, experimentation and evaluation.

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