A ‘small excursion’ vs action-oriented thinking

The school can also offer simple and highly targeted learning activities for the development of ESD dispositions, without having to go through the whole process from societal issue to choice. These are, as it were, small excursions into societal issues. At the other end of the spectrum is true, action-oriented thinking, where pupils start from a societal issue and work towards an action.

Societal issue –challenge – choice

A societal issue is a starting point for action-oriented thinking, the beginning of a process that ends (provisionally) with the making of a conscious choice.

The process from societal issue to choice is carefully constructed, and includes the necessary time for reflection. Without wishing to lapse into a step-by-step plan, there are divergent and convergent phases in such processes. One diverges to explore the possibilities for action, and then converges once a choice is made.

An explanation of some of the issues in the process of moving from societal issue to choice, via the challenge, follows. The challenge is required in order to work in a highly focused way towards the desired action.

From societal issue to challenge: a personal question

The process from societal issue to carefully formulated challenge is preferably performed by the pupils themselves (Kay 1994). This allows them to see working towards a choice as something of their own, something they personally want to realise in society, and not as a task or job.

The motivation and engagement of learners is much higher if the challenges are locally relevant (Östman, Van Poeck & Öhman 2019) and if these challenges have a direct link to the living environment of learners and the local community around the school. Challenges are preferably formulated in a group. This is because of the educational benefits that arise when we engage in learning processes together, but also from a societal point of view. Participatory, democratic and transdisciplinary work is necessary in order to transform society (Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2015).

Alternately diverging and converging

Societal issues are very broad, so research is needed to get a full picture of the issue and all possible sub-issues; to bring systems into focus and to explore all of their sub-issues. Information is sought, preferably together with others. We call this divergence. The added value of collaboration is discussed further in this chapter.

Despite divergent exploration, the teacher can to some extent direct the focus or attention of pupils by providing specific information, or by directing the pupils’ attention towards certain aspects of the societal issue. For example, when dealing with the issue of inequality, a teacher could focus attention on housing, educational opportunities, etc.

An important source of knowledge here is interaction with other perspectives in order to broaden or deepen our own view. We need this in order to be able to decide for ourselves what touches us, makes us curious, or triggers us regarding the issue. This can then lead to convergence, towards a carefully formulated challenge.

In other words, divergence is necessary in order to converge and thus arrive at a challenge that:

– relates to a sub-aspect of a societal issue

– is a result of transdisciplinary research on a societal issue, in which more than one perspective is always taken into account – relates to something that affects or motivates the pupils personally or as a group (intrinsic motivation)

– offers opportunities to take action within the pupils’ own scope of action.