Trial lecture
Place: Auditorium 3, Helga Engs hus
Time: 10:00 - 10:45
Title: The role of education in sustainability crisis: identifying challenges and devising possibilities in Norwegian formal education
Public Defence
Place: Auditorium 3, Helga Engs hus
Time: 12:00 -
Evaluation committee
- 1st opponent: Associate Professor Elisabet Langmann, Södertörn University, Sweden
- 2nd opponent: Associate Professor Jonas Andreasen Lysgaard, Aarhus University Denmark
- Chair of committee: Professor Luca Tateo, Department of Special Needs Education, University of Oslo, Norway
Chair of defence:
- Professor emeritus Glenn Ole Hellekjær, Department of Teacher Education and School Research, University of Oslo, Norway
Supervisors
- Associate Professor Elin Sæther, Department of Teacher Education and School Research, University of Oslo
- Professor Torill Strand, Department of Education, University of Oslo
Summary
This thesis is guided by the following question: How can we understand human being and becoming in environmental and sustainability education? I approach this question by exploring notions of human being and becoming and situating them in the Anthropocene. I arrive at the following insight: Conceptualizing education in the Anthropocene cannot be reduced to the purpose of education. Any such conception also needs to consider ontological and epistemological issues of human being and becoming. The former may entail ethical ideals or societal needs and political ambitions. An understanding of education that considers ontological and epistemological aspects is not exclusively interested in what education should
strive for. Rather, it is also interested in what education can achieve. With this argument as a backdrop, I develop insights into environmental and sustainability education in the Anthropocene and move toward a framework for education in times of crisis.
The first contribution is an empirically oriented paper. It explores the discourses of critical thinking and education for sustainable development in the Norwegian curriculum renewal. I argue that the general part of the curriculum treats these two discourses as largely separate. Accordingly, I point out that there is a risk of environmental and sustainability education
being perceived merely as an attempt to socialize students into pre-defined attitudinal and behavioral patterns at the expense of citizenship skills like critical thinking. I call for an approach to environmental and sustainability education that is empowering, critical, and pluralistic.
The second contribution discusses utopia—an ideal, non-existent place—as an educational means to transgress unsustainable discourses of human being and becoming. I draw on Peircean semiotics to frame the utopian imagination and—closely interrelated with it—human selves. Drawing on utterances from a student debate on climate change, I illustrate how working with utopia entails engaging productively with dissonances and vagueness and may eventually imply the transformation of the self. In the research literature, this process of transgression—of the self and of hegemonic discourse—is commonly framed as empowerment or emancipation. I argue such processes are not purely rational and may involve feelings of disorientation, confusion, and loss.
In the third contribution, I draw on agential realism and object-oriented ontology to contest the metaphor of light that permeates much of climate change education and present an alternative metaphor: an education in shades of blue. I build the argument around the predominant notion of hope, which is often conceptualized in three dimensions: as entailing visions, awareness of potential pathways, and trust in individual and collective efficacy as well as in societal actors. I argue that, in particular, the focus on visions and vision building may foster a deceptive optimism. As an alternative, I suggest grounding education in solidarity and care and take inspiration from Kropotkin’s concept of mutual aid. An education in shades of blue, I argue, is situated between utopian and dystopian images and encompasses a range of emotions. Such an education creates an awareness of social and ecological forces
and is grounded in solidarity and care.