https://www.mdu.se/

The aim of this study is to characterize upper secondary school teachers’ views on and use of digital learning resources (DLR) for teaching and explore whether there are differences between teachers’ profiles in relation to demographic aspects. The data was collected through an online survey from a sample of 243 teachers from 23 upper secondary schools in Sweden. The survey included questions on why and how teachers used DLR for teaching. The data was analysed using exploratory factor, cluster, and post hoc analyses. Five different teacher profiles were identified: high, high general, medium, medium general, and low DLR capacity. These profiles differed significantly concerning self-reported skills, use, and purposes of DLR. Moreover, the five profiles also differ significantly on demographic factors such as teacher degree. These findings have important implications for the design of in-service teacher training and pre-service teacher education programs concerning teachers’ skills, didactic purposes, and use of DLR.

Gifted and talented children should be identified at an early stage and provided with opportunities to thrive, flourish, and develop in inclusive education. Inclusive education refers to a sense of belonging, and development to one’s fullest, including talent development. This international scoping review aims to investigate contextual and environmental factors contributing to well-functioning inclusive education, with a particular focus on early identification of gifted and talented children. The Bioecological model for human development and the Differentiating Model of Giftedness and Talent constituted the framework. Twenty-three (N=23) research articles were included and two thematical analyses were conducted. Regarding early identification, five influential factors (i.e., themes) were created: Knowledge about giftedness and talent; Opportunities for all children to demonstrate their abilities; Identification strategies; Collaborations; and Teacher education and professional development. Regarding well-functioning inclusive education, five factors (i.e., themes) were created, which, in addition to early identification, will also play a role; these were: Policies recognising inclusion and gifted and talented children; Appreciation of diversity; Additional educational provisions; Peer interactions and learning; and Home-school partnership. A factor model for early identification and well-functioning inclusive education targeting giftedness and talent is presented, and suggestions for practitioners and further research are provided.

This chapter draws on research conducted through a project with secondary and upper secondary teachers in England, Finland and Sweden aiming to mobilise critical and complex approaches to teaching global issues. Reviewing important scholarship criticising GCE and ESD from postcolonial theory, we propose an analytical tool, Andreotti’s (2012) HEADSUP checklist, to support ethical global issues pedagogy. We share some feedback from the participants on the tool and offer three classroom snapshots from classes where teachers volunteered to apply HEADSUP. We then discuss some challenges and possibilities emerging from our project, and suggest directions for further work in this area.

Purpose: This paper considers the relevance of critical and decolonial approaches to global education in northern Europe through theoretical and empirical research.

Methodology: We present a case for an approach that engages the modern/colonial dynamic (Mignolo, 2000; Andreotti, 2014) and pluriversality (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018). We conducted a project involving workshops with secondary teachers in England, Finland, and Sweden centred on Andreotti’s (2012) HEADSUP tool. We recorded discussions at the workshops and individual interviews after applying the tool in practice.

Findings: Teachers are both strategic and reticent in how they take up colonialism when teaching global issues. Wider political contexts and teachers’ and students’ own experiences with colonialism and racialisation are very much part of how ethical global issues are framed, unpacked, and responded to in classrooms. While there are some significant challenges evident, several teachers deepened their approach and co-produced a teacher resource supporting the application of HEADSUP to classroom practice.

In this chapter, the authors report on a participatory research project with secondary school teachers in England, Finland, and Sweden that aimed to explore the possibilities for ethical global issues pedagogy in the classroom. The project had three integrated stages: 1) development and delivery of a workshop for teachers based on a synthesis of theoretical work in critical global citizenship education and environmental and sustainability education, and introducing Andreotti's (2012) HEADSUP tool; 2) classroom visits and reflective interviews with teachers where the workshop material was applied and adapted; and 3) drafting, reviewing, piloting, and publishing online a resource to support teacher practice. Findings show teachers are inspired and committed to engaging with deep ethical pedagogical approaches to global issues. However, in order to be able to take up critical approaches in the classroom, teachers require resources and spaces where they can engage with theory and research, reflect, experiment, and exchange information with other teachers.

This article builds from scholarship in Environmental and Sustainability Education and Critical Global Citizenship Education calling for more explicit attention to how teaching global issues is embedded in the colonial matrix of power (Mignolo, 2018). It reports on findings from a small exploratory study with sec-ondary and upper secondary school teachers in England, Finland, and Sweden who participated in work-shops drawing on the HEADSUP (Andreotti, 2012) tool. HEADSUP specifies seven repeated and inter-secting historical patterns of oppression often reproduced through global learning initiatives. Teachers dis-cussed the tool and considered how it might be applied in their practice. The paper reviews two of the key findings from their discussions: a) the mediation of charity discourses and global-local relations and b) emerging evidence of how national policy culture and context influence teachers’ perceptions in somewhat surprising ways.

Over the last 20 years, international organisations and national governments have stressed the need for education policies to be (re)oriented towards social change, sustainability and preparing students for life in a global society. This area of pedagogy is not problem free. When policy is turned into practice teachers need to take a number of factors into account, especially when global sustainability issues are complex. In this article I investigate how six teachers with experience of international professional development reflect on and incorporate global sustainability issues in their teaching. These teachers articulated different ways of utilising the curriculum and enacting pedagogies relating to colonialism and complex global issues. The conclusion is that these teachers’ experiences can help us to understand this work and how it can be developed.

This thesis takes its point of departure in the change of emphasis in the field of environmental and sustainability education (ESE) towards the inclusion of social and human development issues. The theoretical frames of the thesis are poststructural and postcolonial theories, from which different writings, central concepts and approaches are drawn. The thesis also builds on a pragmatist and anti-essentialist approach which argues that we socially construct the meaning of right and wrong and what works better in our lives on the current problematic or situation. The results are presented in four studies and the thesis has three purposes. The first purpose is to describe and investigate theoretical perspectives that take a critical stand on and offer alternatives to universal and consensus-oriented approaches. This purpose is the central focus in the first and second studies. The first study examines the re-emergence of classical cosmopolitanism and contemporary views of the perspective with the intent of discussing its potential for the development of education for sustainable development (ESD). The second study aims to clarify the philosophical problem of addressing universally sustainable responsibilities and values in environmental and sustainability education. The second purpose is to investigate teachers’ ethical reflections in a first-hand intercultural experience. This purpose is dealt with in the third study, where seven Swedish upper secondary school teachers facing particular conflicts of interest and moral situations during a study visit to Central America are interviewed. The third purpose is to investigate how teachers deal with the complex issues of intragenerational equity or social justice in their teaching. This is dealt with in the fourth study, which explores how teachers integrate issues of social justice into their teaching of global sustainability. My hope is that this thesis will contribute to the discussion about how teachers can develop a conscious and critically informed approach to the teaching of environmental and sustainability issues and also contribute to theoretical and philosophical discussions about universalism, normativity and global ethics within environmental and sustainability education research.

My research takes its point of departure in the change of emphasis in the field of environmental and sustainability education (ESE) towards the inclusion of social and human development issues. I have a particular interest in poststructural and postcolonial criticism of universalistic approaches in ESE. The first studies in my PhD research concerned the philosophical problem of addressing universally sustainable responsibilities and values in ESE. The following studies have investigated teachers’ ethical reflections in a first-hand intercultural experience and also explored how teachers integrate issues of social justice into their teaching of global sustainability. This research aims to contribute to the discussion about how teachers can develop a conscious and critically informed approach to the teaching of environmental and sustainability issues and also to contribute to theoretical and philosophical discussions about universalism, normativity and global ethics within environmental and sustainability education research.

This paper takes as its starting point the shift of emphasis in the field of environmental and sustainability education (ESE) towards the inclusion of social and human development issues. The paper deals with one of the basic guiding principles informing this transition and shift of focus, namely that of social justice framed in terms of our moral obligations to other humans in the Global South. The purpose of the paper is to explore how teachers integrate issues of social justice into their teaching on global sustainability. More specifically, this study investigates how a group of experienced teachers with an interest in global sustainability issues and experiences from North–South educational partnerships reflect on their own teaching. The chosen teachers had all been involved in development programmes and/or school cooperation projects with the aim to promote issues related to sustainable development which included North-South study visits for participating teachers and students. In the study I use postcolonial theory as a framework for the analysis in order to direct attention to and offer a deeper understanding of how historical processes, ethical relations to others, issues of power, and different forms of knowledge and knowing influence ESE practice.

In seeking co-provocateurs for this roundtable, the initial outreach was fuelled by anger regarding the devaluing of social sciences compared to natural sciences and economics (Mendel, 2014) as well as the frustration of seeing poorly designed research by natural scientists studying human behaviour and education without being informed by protocols and best practices developed for such work by the social sciences (Pooley, Mendelsohn & Milner-Gulland, 2014), and ignorance of deep critical explorations of educational and other social processes by sociologists, anthropologists amongst others (Sund & Lysgaard, 2013). However, the initial response provoked an offer to discuss the role of love in environmental and sustainability education research, ESER. While this reply was clearly housed in the same concerns and critique initially expressed, the use of the word “love”, a powerful concept simultaneously simple and complex, drew us to seek a circle of renewal and remembering of life and lives that may have been forgotten at times within ESER.

The phrase “all our/my relations” comes from indigenous worldviews and practices of honouring all the people who have come before you as well as the other living beings with whom we share this planet (Kulnieks, Longboat & Young, 2013). This round table discussion will honour all our relations by remembering the current and past practices which take on issues related to motivation rooted in social and cultural patterns, as well as politics of knowledge with complex histories and inequities (Glass, Scott & Price, 2012; Sund & Öhman, 2014). We will respect people and scholarship via three main currents of discussion:

1. The role of love in ESER
2. “Ignored concepts” - Research and extensive discourse that gets ignored when defining questions that assume people are selfish and have never cooperated to protect the commons, or are not politically active (Gaiser, Rijke & Spanning, 2010) uncritical acceptance of people/nature dichotomy, uncritical use of education as transferring information from expert to ignorant.
3. Political dimensions of ESER (postcolonial lens, global inequities, poverty in the “south”)

The discussions will flow at the level of and through individuals, but also at infrastructural and conceptual spaces and places. Creative methodologies provide powerful avenues to disrupt imbalances and injustices and take into account issues of representation, legitimation and politics in research as well as communications about research (McKenzie, 2005). Philip Payne (2005) challenges the limitations of textual discourse as a way of knowing; he focuses on “being, doing and becoming a relational, social and ecological ‘self’” (p. 415) and suggests that strong cultural production constrains these qualities. Framing, metaphors and narratives are important for meaning making (Lakoff, 2010) and are particularly important to deconstruct when challenging dominant views that may have been taken as common sense (Stone-Mediatore, 2003), as well as inviting critical reflection on the very story being told. We will use creative juxtapositioning of the currents of discussion in order to evoke deeper insights than may arise from sequential presentations of the three discussion themes (Neilson, 2009). Additionally, the format of the round table will include multiple forms of communications to involve all who attend, and, the participants along with the provocateurs will physically be seated within a circle.

References

Gaiser, W., Rijke, J.D., & Spanning, R. (2010). Youth and political participation – empirical results for Germany within a European context. Youth 18(4), 427-450. Glass, J. H., Scott, A., & Price, M. F. (2012). Getting active at the interface: How can sustainability researchers stimulate social learning? In A. Wals & P. Blaze Concoran (Eds.) Learning for sustainability in times of accelerating change. pp. 167-183. Wageningen University Press, NL. Kronlid, D.O., & Öhman, J. (2012). An environmental ethical conceptual framework for research on sustainability and environmental education. Environmental Education Research, ifirst article, 1-24. Kulnieks, A., Longboat, D. R. & Young, K. (2013). Contemporary Studies in Environmental and Indigenous Pedagogies. A Curricula of Stories and Place. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Lakoff, G. (2010). Praxis forum. Why it matters how we frame the environment. Environmental Communication, 4(1), 70-81. McKenzie, M. (2005). The ‘post-post period’ and environmental education research. Environmental Education Research, 11(4), 401-412. Mendel, J. (2014). Bad Research and High Impact: The Science: So What Campaign and Social Media Criticism. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 13(1), 56-61. Neilson, A. L. (2009). The power of nature and the nature of power. Special Issue: Inquiries into practice. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 14, 136-148. Payne, P. (2005). Lifeworld and textualism: Reassembling the researcher/ed and ‘others’. Environmental Education Research, 11(4), 413-431. Pooley, S. P., Mendelsohn, J. A., & Milner‐Gulland, E. J. (2014). Hunting Down the Chimera of Multiple Disciplinarity in Conservation Science. Conservation Biology, 28(1), 22-32. Stone-Mediatore, S. (2003). Reading across border: Storytelling and knowledges of resistance. New York, NY: Palgrave. Sund, L., & Öhman, J. (2014). On the need to repoliticise environmental and sustainability education: Rethinking the postpolitical consensus. Environmental Education Research, 20(5), 639-659. Sund, P., & Lysgaard, J. (2013). Reclaim “Education” in Environmental and Sustainability Education Research. Sustainability, 5(4), 1598–1616.

According to sustainable development target 4.7, by 2030, all signatory nations must ensure learners are provided with education for sustainable development and global citizenship. While many national curricula provide a policy imperative to provide a global dimension in curriculum and teaching, mainstreaming an approach to teaching about sustainable development through pressing global issues requires strong attention to what happens between students and teachers in the classroom. In this article, we aim to help teachers think through an ongoing reflexive approach to teaching by bridging important theoretical and empirical scholarship with the day-to-day pedagogies of global educators. This collaborative praxis offers an actionable approach to engaging with values, conflicts and ethical consequences towards bringing global issues into teaching and learning in a critical and fruitful way. Our results show that teachers and students can both experience discomfort and experience a sense of significance and worthiness of engaging in a more critical approach. In addition, if we critically reflect and support students in doing so, as these teachers have done, we open up possibilities for approaches to global issues pedagogy that come much closer to addressing the pressing issues of our deeply unequal world.

This article builds from scholarship in Environmental Education Research (EER) and Critical Global Citizenship Education calling for more explicit attention to how teaching global issues is embedded in the colonial matrix of power. We also consider the extent to which recent calls in EER for explicit attention to coloniality connect to discussions about posthuman thinking through a shared critical reading of modernity. We argue that ethical approaches to global issues, and pedagogical processes and practices that would contribute to them, are possible only if we recognize the relations of power that have shaped history and engage with critical modes of inquiry. Furthermore, we argue for the need to engage deeply with and confront historical patterns in concrete pedagogical practices in order to interrupt our own epistemic, political, ethical, and strategic place and categories. Finally, we will draw upon an example from our classroom-based research to consider how our findings relate to what is being called for in the critical scholarship of praxis, as informed by empirical studies.

In recent years scholars interested in teaching and learning in social studies in schools have showed how learning in social studies classrooms can be understood through instruction, dialogue, cognition, reflection, concepts, thinking, writing, reading and awareness (cf. Bickmore & Parker, 2014; Brooks, 2011; Hess; 2002; Journell, Walker Beeson & Ayers, 2015; King, 2009; Nokes, 2014; Savenije, van Boxtel & Grever, 2014). Despite these important contributions, learning risks being limited to explorations of cognitive, verbal and/or written aspects of the educational situation. 

Learning is, however, very much also embodied, including the embodied interactions with the environment (cf. Shilling, 2000, Zembylas 2007), and research also reveals that secondary social studies is facing a crisis since a majority of students still are made to memorize and reproduce socioscientific knowledge instead of being prepared to use knowledge meaningfully and participating in public discussions (Sandahl 2015; Ljunggren et al. 2015; King 2009). Social studies have accordingly, as many other school subjects, often been handled as dis-embodied (Almqvist & Quennerstedt, 2015; Evans, Davies & Rich 2009), and this gives us a quite limited view of the learning going on in classrooms. The consequences of this gap in research as well as practice are that we miss out on important aspects of what Armour et al. (2015) argues to be “the dazzling complexity of the learning process” (p. 11).

In this presentation we aim to ‘transgress’ the separation of mind and body and explore embodied aspects of learning in the social studies classroom. With a point of departure in John Dewey’s transactional view of learning and Sharon Todd’s discussion on the liminality of pedagogical relationships, the ambition with the papers is not to explore ‘The Learning’ going on, or what every student learn in the explored situations. Instead, we argue that students always enter pedagogical encounters as some-body, and that it correspondingly is fruitful to explore students’ embodied engagements as an important but often overlooked aspect of the social studies classroom. The risk that remains is otherwise that social studies is treated as dis-embodied and that we as a consequence do not fully understand or embrace the potential of social studies.

Hence, the purpose of the study is to explore embodied engagements in a social sciences classroom. The focus in the study is on expected and potential pedagogical encounters and how students’ actions obtain a certain function in the classroom. As a conclusion we will discuss the results of our analysis in terms of the liminality of pedagogical encounters in classroom practice.

Our intent in this study is not to resolve tensions produced by theontological divide between representational and non-representational approachesor the epistemological separation of mind and body. Instead, by turning topragmatism and Dewey’s transactional perspective, we intend to approach socialstudies as embodied rather than dis-embodied. 

Method

By focusing on embodiment in a transactional perspective the attention is turned from bodies as a pre-determined metaphysical entity separated from the mind to what bodies do and become in and through transactions with the environment (Biesta & Tedder 2006; Garrison 2015). Taking a transactional approach, the study puts into focus the ‘lived’, embodied engagements with others (teachers, student peers) and the environment (classroom practice, classroom materiality) they engage in. The analysis is conducted in three steps; (i) distinguishing pedagogical encounters, (ii) identifying embodied engagements, and (iii) categorising embodied engagements by the function of actions-in-context. In this study we focus on situations where the body is foregrounded and the action is connected to subject matter. Accordingly, we are interested in both the pedagogical relation between teacher and students and the didactic relation between subject matter, instructional activities and teachers and students involved. This is described by Hudson (2015) as the didactic triadic that recognises the complex set of relations between teacher, student and content (Cf. Klette 2007). The study has no generalizing ambition since the data comes from a small sample, however, we hope that the insights that can be drawn from this case can be helpful in re-understanding social studies as embodied rather than dis-embodied. The empirical material consists of video recorded lessons from two different subject areas (Criminology and Sociology) in an upper secondary school in Sweden. The content of the lessons is small group activities, whole class lectures and student presentations. The class consisted of 31 students in their final year of the Business Management and Economics Programme. In exploring embodied engagements in a social sciences classroom several challenges arise. As Estola and Elbaz-Luwisch (2003) state “attention to the body is a challenge to both the researchers and the methods used” (p. 715). These challenges can be summarised as the difficulty in exploring the dazzling complexity of any educational situation involving verbal and non-verbal actions and communication, teachers and students, teaching aids, the materiality of the classroom as well as the context as a whole (Cf. Quennerstedt, Öhman & Öhman 2011). In order to handle this complexity the question that guided us in our analysis of our video recorded data was how aspects of embodied engagements manifest themselves in the social studies classroom. As a conclusion we will also discuss the results of our analysis in terms of the liminality of pedagogical encounters in classroom practice.

Expected Outcomes

In the analysis we have identified three embodied engagements in the social studies classroom: (i) disengaged encounters, (ii) screened encounters, (iii) collective inquiry. These embodied engagements describe functions that different actions-in-context have in transaction in the classroom. Each category describes different functional roles that teachers, students, classroom settings, tasks, etc. have in embodied engagements and the direction this takes in the pedagogical encounter. The categories are not mutually exclusive, but instead intertwined with each other in real situations.Disengaged encounters is about how students are made disengaged in transaction with others and the environment in terms of teacher led lessons, peer presentations or disengaging tasks.Screened encounters refer to embodied engagements being both focused towards screens (computers, smart-boards etc) and screened off in terms of how student interaction occurs.Collective inquiry is events when students actively (as some-body) engage in a collective, communicative process guided by conditions of uncertainty and change.These results will be clarified and discussed further in terms of the liminality of embodied engagements in classroom practice with reference to Todd (2014). Todd uses the metaphor of liminality, or the threshold, as a way of discussing that pedagogical relationships in education are “played out materially, between bodies in the present, unpredictably against a future that is always unknown” (p. 243) thus these pedagogical encounters have the potential to be transformative. The paper aims to contribute to earlier research on embodied aspects of learning in Sweden and Europe and to extend the methodological approaches currently in use within the field of subject didactics.

References

Almqvist, J. & Quennerstedt, M. (2015). Is there (any)body in science education? Interchange. A Quarterly review of Education, 46(4), pp 439-453.

Armour, K. Quennerstedt, M. Chambers, F & Makopoulou, K. (2015). What is ‘effective’ CPD for contemporary physical education teachers? A Deweyan framework. Sport, Education and Society, DOI:10.1080/13573322.2015.1083000.

Biesta, G.J.J. & Tedder, M. (2006). How is agency possible? Towards an ecological understanding of agency-as-achievement. Working paper 5, Exeter: The Learning Lives project.

Estola, E. & Elbaz-Luwisch, F. (2003). Teaching bodies at work. Journal of Curriculum Stuides, 35(6), pp. 697–719.

Evans, J., Davies, B. & Rich, E. (2009). The body made flesh: embodied learning and the corporeal device. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 30(4), 391-406.

Garrison, Jim (2015). Dewey’s Aesthetics of Body-Mind Functioning. Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind: Beyond Art Theory and the Cartesian Mind-Body Dichotomy. Alfonsina Scarinzi (ed.), Dordrecht: Springer.

Hess, D. E. (2002). Discussing Controversial Public Issues in Secondary Social Studies Classrooms: Learning from Skilled Teachers. Theory & Research in Social Education, 30(1), 10-41.

Hudson, B. (2015). The epistemology and methodology of curriculum: didactics. In The SAGE handbook of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, edited by Wyse, Dominic, Hayward, Louise and Pandya, Jessica (eds.) Sage. 

Journell, W, Walker Beeson, M. & Ayers, C. A. (2015). Learning to Think Politically: Toward More Complete Disciplinary Knowledge in Civics and Government Courses. Theory & Research in Social Education, 43(1), pp. 28-67.

King, J. T. (2009). Teaching and Learning about Controversial Issues: Lessons from Northern Ireland, Theory & Research in Social Education, 37(2), pp. 215-246.

Klette, K. (2007). Trends in Research on Teaching and Learning in Schools: didactics meets classroom studies. European Educational Research Journal (online), 6(2), pp. 147-161.

Quennerstedt, M., Öhman, J. & Öhman, M. (2011) Investigating learning in physical education – a transactional approach. Sport, Education and Society, 16:2, 159-177.

Savenije, G. M., van Boxtel C. & Grever, M. (2014). Learning about Sensitive History: “Heritage” of Slavery as a Resource. Theory & Research in Social Education, 42(4), pp. 516-547.

Schilling, C. (2000). The Body. In G. Browning, A. Halcli, & F. Webster (Eds.), Understanding contemporary society: Theories of the present. (pp. 415-432). London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Todd, S. (2014). Between Body and Spirit: The Liminality of Pedagogical Relationships. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 48(2), pp. 231-245.

Zembylas, M. (2007). The specters of bodies and affects in the classroom: a rhizo‐ethological approach, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 15(1), pp.19-35.

This contribution builds on an analytical approach using Dewey’s thoughts on morals and ethics to address how we acquire our morals, how we can reflect on moral situations, and how ethical reflections are visible in practice. In the study (Sund and Öhman, 2014) we investigate the variety of ethical reflections that emerge when a group of Swedish teachers participate in a study visit to Central America. Following Dewey, we investigated how a teacher, in interaction with others, finds a way to morally reason and co-ordinate with her or his surroundings. In this social co-construction things are literally made common—we socially construct the meaning of right and wrong and what works better in our lives, given the current problematic or situation.

The study illustrates important possibilities for using Dewey’s perspective on morals and ethics in empirical studies. Firstly, ethical reflections are not hidden within humans’ minds but are available for empirical investigations of actions. Secondly, morality arises in relation to others and therefore needs to be investigated in relation to concrete and lived experiences. Thirdly, it demonstrates how ethical reflections can be investigated as processes of continuity and change. Lastly, the result underlines Dewey’s point that we need to move away from normative ethical theories and instead deepen the understanding of how humans try to co-ordinate their everyday actions with other people.

Investing in cultural diversity and an intercultural dialogue is today regarded as one of the guiding principles within education for sustainable development (ESD) (Unesco 2009). A popular way of increasing intercultural understanding in order to deal with cultural diversity is by meeting – at eye-level – with people coming from other cultural backgrounds.

 We have studied teachers taking part in a Sida-funded in-service training programme called the Global Journey where the aim of the program is to foster intercultural dialogue and education in global issues for sustainable development in preschools, schools and adult education. Global Journeys provide opportunities for groups of Swedish teachers and educational professionals to spend an intense period of time in a developing country. The visits are part of a structured process of learning, planned a year in advance and evaluated four months after each journey.

We believe that this aim to strengthen the linkage between culture and ESD can be seen as a turn to ethics in so far as it involves thinking about the ways in which we respond to otherness. Ethical issues arise in relation to others, between bodies – and there we also face our moral dilemmas. The aim of this paper is to study teachers’ moral meaning-making in a lived cultural encounter that involves moral and ethical judgements. We also would like to discuss the educational implications of cultural encounters such as Global Journeys and the educational value of traveling to meet the other.

This article draws attention to the possibilities of the ongoing philosophical discussion about cosmopolitan universal values in relation to the normative challenges in environmental and sustainability education (ESE). The purpose of this paper is to clarify the philosophical problems of addressing universally sustainable responsibilities and values in ESE. Our arguments draw inspiration from the work of three poststructuralist scholars: we explore how Butler develops her claim that universal assertion requires a cultural translation, how Mouffe exposes the political in universal claim and how Todd argues that education needs to introduce students to a political language that enables them to critically reflect on their own and other groups’ values and actions. In the concluding part, we suggest the following guidelines for rethinking ESE: unmasking the political dimension, re-politicising education, seeing beyond the relativist and objectivist divide and using passion as a moving force.

This paper draws attention to the possibilities of the qualified philosophical discussion about a cosmopolitan dilemma in the development of ESD. We argue that one challenge facing the development of ESD is the finding of balanced ways to deal with the normativity dilemma that take both the search for universal claims and particular contexts seriously.

Taking the perspective of educational philosopher Sharon Todd, we explore how postmodernist thinking and a poststructural perspective balance between the cultivation of universal values and individuals’ autonomous thinking, and relate these approaches to ESD. 

Our claim is that ESD is in need of a critical discussion and exploration of ESD as a political project with dissonant voices that takes the particular human encounter into consideration.

In this article we argue that culturally variable values and morals have a key role in educational initiatives that address a global dimension. The article suggests that looking at values and morals in relation to a teaching practice is a way of adding knowledge to this field. Our study inquires into how an intercultural experience can evoke ethical reflections on environmental and sustainability issues. The article is based on a qualitative empirical study of teachers’ experiences of a teacher development programme, where we analyse the variety of ethical reflections that emerge during a study visit to a Central American country. We build on a pragmatic analytical approach that takes John Dewey’s ethical thoughts on moral situations as a point of departure and deals with teachers’ ethical reflections in a way that takes the contextual and situated nature of morals into account.

The purpose of this symposium is to present a range of studies which use Dewey’s transactional perspective on meaning-making and practical epistemologies of education.

In his influential work Democracy and Education (1916) John Dewey states that the basic role of education is to introduce the new generation to the knowledge and customs of previous members of a society. But a society consists of many practices and since different practices are based on different purposes, values and interests, the ideas that are held as true and good and the justified ways of making meaning differ between practices (Rorty 1991). To be a competent member of a society thus means being able to understand and make meanings in relation to a number of different practical epistemologies but also being capable of being critical of such epistemologies. 

The research group SMED (Studies of Meaning-making in Educational Discourses) has been engaged in the development of a methodology for analysing meaning-making processes where people are introduced to different practical epistemologies in educational settings. The methodology builds on John Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy and especially his concept of transaction (Dewey & Bentley 1949/1991). This perspective overcomes the methodological problems connected with the dualistic tendencies that trouble many other approaches to learning and classroom interactions. Within this approach meaning is not treated as something that exists within things themselves or in the minds of human beings, but is seen as the relations to the environment that is created in the processes of doing and undergoing the consequences of action. Such coordination is not restricted to knowledge but also involves ethical and aesthetical relations to the environment. Learning can thus be investigated in terms of actions, within a set of different practical epistemologies. 

Storskaliga och kostsamma nationella tester genomförs i hela västvärlden och tar stora lärarresurser i anspråk. Med stora satsningar som dessa är det viktigt att ställa frågan om betygsunderlaget som genereras är likvärdigt? Studiens titel, ”alla gör fel” anspelar på just detta och kommer från en elevs uttalande då eleven inser det sannolika i att samtliga elever i elevgruppen gör på samma sätt av sociala skäl istället för att använda sig av sina individuella naturvetenskapliga kunskaper. Denna fallstudie undersöker svenska lärares möjligheter att bedöma elevers individuella förmågor i tre undervisningsgrupper under genomförandet av ett praktiskt delmoment i det nationella provet i kemi i åk 9. Datainsamling genomfördes med två fasta videokameror och tre par spionglasögon. Trots att provinstruktioner till elever och lärare är väl utvecklade och bedömningsanvisningar till läraren är detaljerade visar resultaten i denna studie att det är svårt att bedöma elevers individuella praktiska förmågor. Det finns många olika slags faktorer som påverkar provresultatet. En sådan faktor är provet genomförs i en laborationssal där situationen skiljer sig väsentligt från miljön för ett teoretiskt prov i ett klassrum. En annan faktor är att det under den praktiska provdelen i en laborationssal närmast är omöjligt för eleverna att undvika att kommunicera. Studiens resultat visar att det finns påverkansfaktorer som sociala interaktioner och systematiska fysiska felkällor. I resultatet diskuteras hur lärares möjligheter att bedöma elevers individuella praktiska förmågor under nationella prov bättre kan säkerställas.

Environmental and sustainability education (ESE) consists of topical existentialand ethical issues. At the same time, these issues are taught ina school setting that is shaped by assignments, grades, and school tasks.The relationships between structures of formal education in a schoolenvironment and the characteristics of ESE has been described in dichotomousterms as a contradiction, known in the ESE research field as“Stevenson’s gap”, after Robert B. Stevenson. The aim of this article is toovercome this dichotomous understanding of the relation betweenschooling and ESE by providing a pragmatist perspective. Drawing onJohn Dewey’s notion of habit, two learning habits are outlined by whichstudents encounter environmental and sustainability issues in the classroom:the habit of schooling and the habit of inquiry. Empirical data fromSwedish upper secondary schools is used to illustrate their meaning inclassroom practice. Our pragmatist conceptualisation highlights howthese habits are simultaneously present in the same classroom. A conclusionis that teaching and learning in ESE should not be reduced toeither habit but that both can be valuable for a robust and vital ESE.

This article proposes a model that describes and frames sustainability commitment. The model is based on didactic theory and pragmatic philosophy and is informed by several empirical studies on environmental and sustainability education (ESE) practice. The intention is for the model to serve as a critical perspective on ESE practices in secondary and upper secondary schools, and to offer a framework for the development of future practice with emphasis on teachers’ choices of content and teaching methods. The model suggests that a sound commitment is situated in the in-tersection of the intellectual, emotional, and practical aspects of sustainability. It is argued that: The intellectual aspect is essential for giving the commitment scientific rigor and a critical stance; emotions are vital for students to become dedicated; and skills to carry out appropriate actions for change is necessary for playing an active role in providing a sustainable transformation of society.