Th e school as a place for practice

Education for Sustainable Development

Space to practice

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) means education that starts from the vision of the school as a safe place for practice, in which pupils are given opportunities to develop the disposition to make conscious choices in society and through experiences with societal issues.

This allows them to grow into active, conscious and resilient world citizens who, together with others, make their own choices and who can and want to shape society. A school that provides ESD not only gives children and young people general development opportunities, but also teaches them to deal consciously with the societal choices and questions with which they are or will be confronted. ESD dispositions (about which more below) are incorporated into the curriculum from pre-school to higher education. In doing so, the school fulfils its role as a place for practice par excellence, where pupils can gain experience from dealing with societal issues, and learn from these experiences, without societal pressure. They can experience successes and mistakes without any major consequences. This is why ESD explicitly presents societal issues as a relevant, authentic and transdisciplinary learning context for pupils, within which they can develop themselves optimally. Here the previously discussed aspects of the disposition of choice apply - the four factors that determine the disposition to think and act effectively and purposefully, i.e., sensitivity, motivation, knowledge and thinking processes. These factors provide the educational professional with an accurate compass for designing learning activities.

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) means education – that starts from the vision of the school as a safe place for practice, – in which pupils are given opportunities to develop the disposition to make conscious choices in society – through the experience of dealing with societal issues.

The complexity of societal issues

The complexity of societal issues offers many opportunities for the development of the disposition to make choices in society as resilient individuals, together with others, in an active, conscious way. Societal issues can vary greatly in complexity. The complexity of an issue depends on two factors (Block, Van Poeck & Östman 2019): – the general consensus on underlying norms and values – the general consensus on scientific evidence.

The less consensus there is on either of the above points, the more the answers may differ and thus the more complex the issue is.

It is precisely this lack of uniformity of issues and the fact that certain issues call for new, creative answers that makes them an interesting learning context at school. Since even the teacher does not have ready-made answers, the pupils experience the questions as authentic. They feel genuinely called upon to use their dispositions in search of answers. The knowledge and skills imparted by the teacher are also seen as valuable and relevant because they are not an end in themselves, but a means of renewing the world (Van Poeck & Östman 2020).

Even more interesting is that societal issues, due to their lack of unambiguous, ready-made solutions, give rise to research and the construction of hypotheses (Van Poeck & Östman 2020).

Finally, complex societal issues also encourage interaction and the exchange of perspectives. After all, they are treated at school as potential conflicts between interests, values and ideologies (Öhman & Östman 2019) and therefore require a specific approach. The mere transfer of knowledge is not desirable in the context of societal issues. This is by no means intended to minimise the importance of knowledge transfer, given the richness and stratification of the concept of knowledge. By building up knowledge through the interaction and exchange of perspectives, knowledge (Biggs 2003) is not limited to one’s own experiences and personal knowledge, but is expanded by the knowledge of others. So, we experience that we do not exchange perspectives in order to convince others of our rightness, but in order to create new possibilities with them. Moreover, in this way we experience that our idea or perspective regarding a particular situation does not automatically apply to all situations (Öhman & Kronlid 2019).

An additional advantage is that all this leads to innovation. Transitions that can break through existing systems and routines are taking place. By going beyond our own knowledge or points of view, we can look at reality from a different point of view and transcend our limitations (Wals 2010).

For the education provider, this means that he or she cannot pretend to be someone who ‘knows it all’ and cannot act as a moral authority. He or she is someone who values pupils’ perspectives and encourages them to express them (Öhman & Östman 201).

Societal issues are an interesting learning context because of their

– authenticity

– initiation of research

– initiation of collaborative learning.

ESD dispositions

What are ESD dispositions?

A school that uses Education for Sustainable Development lets pupils work on societal issues. It offers pupils the opportunity to develop the disposition to make conscious choices in society. It enables them to learn by working on societal issues. These can be minor, specific, local issues or large, more abstract, global ones. Bringing these issues into the school calls for certain dispositions. We call them ESD dispositions. These dispositions can be seen as goals that guide educational practice. It is good to keep in mind that they are not goals in themselves, but rather aspects of our thinking and doing that determine the success we achieve. In tapping into ESD dispositions, the combination of knowledge, key thinking processes, sensitivity and motivation ensures that we think and act effectively and purposefully on societal issues.

ESD dispositions are a compass in the process of the school designing a powerful learning environment that offers pupils the space to develop as conscious, resilient and active global citizens.

Four ESD dispositions

Many educational professionals will agree that education should offer pupils the opportunity to develop the disposition to make conscious choices in society. However, this intention is very general and therefore difficult to concretise. To make it possible to translate this goal into learning activities, we break it down into four ESD dispositions: systemic, transformative, social and reflective dispositions.

ESD dispositions work together as a system for dealing with and addressing societal issues. In practice, therefore, they are always addressed simultaneously and in combination.

– Systemic disposition is the disposition to think in systems and relationships, to switch between different perspectives and to look for leverage points for change. One could see it as a disposition that enables us to gain insight into what is happening around us.

– Transformative disposition is the disposition to intervene at one or more leverage points in order to initiate fundamental change in one or more systems. Transformative disposition can be seen as the driver of change (Lotz-Sisitka 2015) (Wals 2017). It is crucial to eventually take action, to make a choice, a decision, have an opinion. Ideally, that action should be taken at one or more leverage points. Because change rarely comes about by acting on just one leverage point (Block & Paredis 2019), we speak of ‘one or more’. In the same way, real, sustainable change only comes about when we bring about change in multiple systems and not just in one.

– Social disposition is the disposition to interact with different perspectives on thinking and acting. Interaction can happen between people, face to face. But we also interact with other perspectives that we find in books, the media or articles. An object can also be a subject with which you interact (Giamminuti, Merewether & Blaise 2020).

– Reflective disposition is the disposition to look back at thinking and actions, question them, evaluate them, appreciate them or adjust them where necessary. The influence of the frame of reference also plays an important role in this disposition. After all, actions are always guided by the underlying frame of reference (Hyerle 2009) (Van Poeck & Östman 2019).

By explicitly focusing on reflective disposition at school, we offer pupils the opportunity to grow in critically evaluating societal issues and the way in which we deal with these issues as a society, both collectively and individually. Moreover, by studying the underlying frames of reference, we offer pupils the opportunity to learn from the knowledge, values, beliefs and interests behind these different points of view (Öhman & Östman 2019).

Of course, the four defined ESD dispositions are not the only ones that are addressed when pupils deal with societal issues. We therefore do not regard this selection and its interpretation as static, but as a starting point for educational professionals as regards the goal of education. The dispositions are selected as a function of the general disposition to make conscious choices in society, so that pupils develop into conscious, resilient and active global citizens. At the same time, however, we also see them as dispositions used in daily life and in making daily choices, both personal and professional.

The four ESD dispositions are called upon when we think about a societal issue in an action-oriented way, in order to make conscious choices in the society in which we live.

SOCIAL DISPOSITION

THE DISPOSITION TO MAKE CONSCIOUS CHOICES IN SOCIETY

TRANSFORMATIVE DISPOSITION

SYSTEMIC DISPOSITION

REFLECTIVE DISPOSITION

ESD and the three domains of purpose in education

Education has three recognized domains of purpose in education: qualification, socialization and subjectification (Biesta, 2020). The development of ESD dispositions at school is best done while keeping these three domains of purpose in education in sight. Translated into ESD, they can be described as follows:

– Qualification: Education stimulates pupils to build up knowledge and to become skilled in the targeted application of key thinking processes in addressing societal issues.

– Socialization: Education socializes pupils within a culture and in terms of traditions and practices in which we consciously value the development of ESD dispositions.

– Subjectification: Education stimulates pupils to be able and willing to have freedom in making and acting upon their own choices, and thus to lead the life they want to lead, in a society that imposes environmental and societal limits on that freedom.

The school offers pupils opportunities for qualification, socialisation and subjectification by creating an ESD experimental environment for them. Societal issues are put on the table, for pupils to learn from. Knowledge, opinions, feelings and solutions are not offered as an end in themselves, but as the means for pupils to learn to make their own choices in and for society, with respect for their physical and social environment.

Pupils are thus given the opportunity to build up knowledge and become skilled in the targeted use of key learning processes that enable them to discover their own opinions and beliefs (qualification). By offering this opportunity, the school shows how much importance it attaches to this process, and pupils are socialised in terms of these values. An important addition, however, is that pupils are also given the opportunity to experiment with the way they translate these opinions and beliefs into their actions in society. In this way, a reality check with the physical and social environment immediately takes place. Pupils are given the opportunity to experience how they can become subjects of the world, in the sense of ‘active shapers of their own choices’.

In other words, subjectification is a very fundamental domain of purpose in education within ESD, which deserves extra attention. After all, it is not always customary in education to encourage pupils to make their own choices or take action. However, having the freedom to make choices is not a licence to act out of self-interest or without regard for others. It is about freedom in a context. Our planet - but also society - mark the limits of this individual freedom. These boundaries can be physical (e.g. our ecosystems) or social (in the context of what others want). By ‘being able and willing to accept freedom’, we mean finding a place in the world in such a way that we make our own choices, without doing violence to our physical and social environments (Biesta 2020). This freedom thus appeals to the domain of purpose in education of ‘qualification’, ‘socialisation’ and ‘subjectification’.

The three domains of purpose in education function as a systemic whole and are inextricably linked to each other. Examples of subjectification are the so-called ‘climate truants’. They think that participating in climate marches is more important than being at school and they put that opinion into action. Their choice goes against society’s prevailing norm that children and young people should attend school every day. The young people are thus ‘subjects’, or shapers. They make choices and act accordingly. This is in contrast to many other times when they are ‘objects’ at school - direct objects, following the norms and values of the school and what is decided for them.

The development of ESD dispositions in education preferably takes place in the context of the three, recognised domains of purpose in education: qualification, socialisation and subjectification.