Experimental

The word ‘experimental’ in ESD experimental environment relates to the school as a place for practice. In it, pupils have the freedom to think in an action-oriented way about societal issues, without having to meet expectations towards the family, the professional world, society or the government (Van Poeck & Östman). By decoupling development from an agenda, pupils are given the freedom to gain experience. They are allowed to experience mistakes, failures and successes and learn from them. By engaging with societal issues, the school creates opportunities for pupils to develop themselves and, as a result, society.

Specifically, this means that ESD’s primary goal is the learner’s development, with the school’s learning activities on societal issues such as poverty, discrimination and climate change being first and foremost an opportunity for the learners to develop into individuals who make their own choices. A secondary goal, which is a consequence of the primary goal, is societal transformation.

The metaphor used by Masschelein and Simons (Masschelein & Simons 2013), in which education is seen as a place where the school puts matters such as societal issues ‘on the table’ for pupils, brings this view of formal education into sharp focus. The teacher may communicate an opinion, a conviction or a feeling, but always with the intention of opening up the issue. Pupils are thus given the opportunity to form their own opinions, beliefs and feelings.

The metaphor thus (also) points us to the duty of education, to bring the world to the school and to the pupils, using the learning opportunities that the world offers. In this process we are not value- neutral. We show that we have an opinion, a feeling or a point of view when necessary.

In this way we create a learning context for pupils, in which they are the subjects of the change they themselves envisage, and not the objects of change conceived by other societal actors, such as the school or the government.

The school offers learners a learning context by creating an ESD experimental environment in which societal issues from which they can learn are put on the table, and in which knowledge, opinions, feelings and solutions are not offered as ends in themselves, but as the means to be able and willing to make choices in and for society, with respect for the physical and social environment.