Abstract
The dominant discourse on education for sustainable development (ESD) approaches education as an instrument to foster the values and principles of sustainable development, to promote corresponding behavioural changes and to qualify people for the role of active participants that contribute to the democratic realisation of sustainable development. This reflects what Biesta calls a ‘socialisation conception of civic learning’, assuming an instrumental relationship between education, citizenship and democracy. Yet, reducing civic learning to the socialisation of everyone into the same standard fails to acknowledge citizenship as an essentially contested concept and tends to exclude marginalised voices and alternative arguments and points of view. This is particularly problematic in the context of sustainability issues that are pre-eminently open to uncertainty and contestation and characterised by strongly intertwined, often irreconcilable values, interests and knowledge claims. In this chapter, we present a different perspective on ESD, one that enables to understand how educational processes can move beyond a socialisation perspective and at the same time face the ambiguous relation between democracy and sustainable development. This demands educational practices that approach sustainability issues as ‘public issues’, as matters of public concern. We present an analysis of two cases as an attempt to further understand how educational practices can address sustainability issues as public issues. We use an analytical framework inspired by Bruno Latour, actor–network theory and the policy arrangements approach.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Although ‘sustainable development’ is omnipresent in policy discourses, the concept remains largely contested (see, e.g. Bruyninckx 2006). Critics consider it a vague catch-all term susceptible to divergent interpretations. Its meaning is highly ambiguous as the concept conjoins profoundly contradictory meanings. However, this shallow consensus conceals convictions and interests that are still basically antagonistic. Sustainable development is thus the subject of a continuous, more or less explicit struggle over divergent interpretations. We decided to use this problematic concept nonetheless as a key notion in this chapter because it indeed largely affects policy discourses as well as educational practices, particularly in the field of environmental education. Yet, it is important to emphasise that we do not put forward one particular interpretation of how a sustainable society should look like. On the contrary, what our analysis reveals is precisely how educational practices can deal very differently with the ambiguity inherent in the concept and the struggle over diverse interpretations it brings about.
- 2.
Actor–network theory (ANT) is an approach that evolved out of science and technology studies. Authors such as Bruno Latour, Michel Callon and John Law developed a distinctive approach to social theory and research characterised by a constructivist perspective (avoidance of essentialist explanations), a ‘material-semiotic’ method (mapping relations that are simultaneously material and semiotic) and an extension of the understanding of the social by focussing on networks of human as well as non-human actors (thus acknowledging the agency of non-humans, their power to transform society).
- 3.
In ‘No Issue, No Public’, Marres (2005) goes into the concept of ‘community’ in the light of public issues. She characterises Dewey’s notion of the public as ‘a community of strangers’ and criticises his ambiguous account of community life. Although this discussion is utmost relevant in the context of ESD, we cannot elaborate it within the scope of this book chapter. By introducing the concept nonetheless, we want to emphasise that in face of public issues, a public cannot be understood as a social community/sociable collective.
References
Arts, B., Leroy, P., & van Tatenhove, J. P. M. (2006). Political modernisation and policy arrangements: A framework for understanding environmental policy change. Public Organization Review, 6, 93–106.
Biesta, G. (2004). Democracy – A problem for education or an educational problem? In T. Englund (Ed.), Five professors on education and democracy (pp. 89–109). Örebro: Örebro University.
Bruyninckx, H. (2006). Sustainable development: The institutionalization of a contested policy concept. In M. M. Betsill, K. Hochstetler, & D. Stevis (Eds.), Palgrave advances in international environmental politics (pp. 265–298). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hajer, M. (1995). The politics of environmental discourse. Ecological modernization and the policy process. New York: Oxford University Press.
Jickling, B. (1994). Why I don’t want my children to be educated for sustainable development: Sustainable belief. The Trumpeter, 11(3), 2–8.
Læssøe, J. (2007). Participation and sustainable development: The post-ecologist transformation of citizen involvement in Denmark. Environmental Politics, 16(2), 231–250.
Læssøe, J. (2010). Education for sustainable development, participation and socio-cultural change. Environmental Education Research, 16(2), 39–57.
Latour, B. (2004). Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry, 30(2), 225–248.
Latour, B. (2005a). From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik or how to make things public. In B. Latour & P. Weibel (Eds.), Making things public. Atmospheres of democracy (pp. 4–31). Karlsruhe: MIT Press.
Latour, B. (2005b). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marres, N. (2005). No issue, no public. Democratic deficits after the displacement of politics. Doctoral dissertation, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Simons, M., & Masschelein, J. (2009). The public and its university: beyond learning for civic employability. European Educational Research Journal, 8(2), 204–217.
Simons, M., & Masschelein, J. (2010). Governmental, political and pedagogic subjectivation: Foucault with Rancière. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42(5/6), 588–605.
Van Poeck, K., & Vandenabeele, J. (2012). Learning from sustainable development: Education in the light of public issues. Environmental Education Research, 18(4), 541–552.
Acknowledgements
The authors owe thanks to the editors of the book as well as the participants of the doctoral colloquium organised by the Centre for Philosophy of Education (Institute of Education, London) and the Laboratory of Education and Society (KU Leuven) – in particular Maarten Simons and Jan Masschelein – for their valuable comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Van Poeck, K., Vandenabeele, J. (2014). Education and Sustainability Issues: An Analysis of Publics-in-the-Making. In: Biesta, G., De Bie, M., Wildemeersch, D. (eds) Civic Learning, Democratic Citizenship and the Public Sphere. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7259-5_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7259-5_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-7258-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-7259-5
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawEducation (R0)