Developing an awareness of and capacity to productively engage with political issues is crucial to achieving sustainability. Environmental issues are interwoven with political issues, and environmental and sustainability education (ESE) provides a valuable space for students to participate in political dialogue and benefit from the learning process associated with it. Previous studies characterize “the political” as “something that matters.” The political typically involves opposing viewpoints that creates conflict and forces stakeholders to engage in discourse. Although theory has emphasized the importance of the intersection between ESE and the political, limited research exists on how ESE educators can navigate that intersection and manage conflict in learning spaces. Past research highlights the importance of acknowledging conflict in education to build coping mechanisms for conflict and problem-solving skills within student populations. Specific to ESE, research has shown that students with opposing views on climate-change tend to avoid discussing it with each other, which may reinforce the political divide on this topic. This study sought to characterize actions by two ESE educators who did or did not create space for political dialogue during students' learning process.
The authors of this study created a “Political Move Analysis” (PMA) approach to understanding data, which identifies and classifies educator actions that impact the political dialogue and tone in a learning experience. The PMA analytic framework was then applied to two previously conducted case studies in Belgium. The two case studies were chosen because they had rich data, and the educator in the first case created a political discourse (an “emancipatory” environment with productive conflict), while the second educator created a non-political discourse (a “schooling” environment where the educator's opinion was generally uncontested). The first case study documented a class of bioengineering students on a guided tour of a community supported agriculture (CSA) farm. In this context, the farmer was the ESE educator. The tour began within a farm building where the farmer started a discussion on the '3 Ps': Planet, People, and Profit. The second case study detailed an ecological footprint workshop, which was hosted during work hours for the employees of a printing company. The ESE educator who ran the workshop was a representative of an environmental organization dedicated to developing pro-environmental behavior change. The workshop began with a PowerPoint to present basic concepts, then the participants were divided into small groups to discuss ways to reduce their ecological footprints. At the end, each group presented their thoughts. The authors analyzed patterns of verbal and non-verbal communication between ESE educators and students to categorize educator actions and the resulting changes to the learning environment.
The authors identified 4 politicizing and 4 de-politicizing moves employed by the ESE educators.
Within the first case study, the 4 politicizing moves were:
“Controversy Creating” move: encouraged and/or instigated students to express and defend conflicting viewpoints. For example, the farmer conceded that his statements reflect his subjective opinion and explicitly asked students to disagree with him, which encouraged more and more students to voice alternate and conflicting viewpoints.
“Hierarchization” move: forced students to prioritize a set of ideas or concerns, thereby creating a hierarchy of importance. For example, the farmer asked a student whether people, plant, or profit was most important.
“Excluding – Including” move: targeted concerns that are mutually exclusive, typically with specific stakeholders and emotional attachment associated with the outcomes. For example, the farmer said the he does not receive subsidies and suggested that they should be eliminated all-together. This caused one student to express concern because her family owned a farm and depended on subsidies.
“Public – Private” move: discussed how the private and public perspectives on an issue differ. For example, the farmer discussed his personal financial difficulties associated with being a farmer, but also discussed the importance of providing affordable food to society.
Within the second case study, the 4 de-politicizing moves were:
“Reinstating” move: redirected the attention of participants away from a topic, typically more emotionally charged, to the lesson or key knowledge-based topic. For example, two participants were debating the social and environmental issues related freshwater, and the educator re-directed the group's attention to the next PowerPoint slide to avoid escalation.
“Norm Installing” move: formulated a commonly or universally accepted standard about a topic. For example, when participants were discussing transportation choices for reducing ecological footprint, the educator stated that individuals should use a bike for any distance under 3 miles.
“Rationalizing” move: contributed a fact to the discourse. For example, the educator supported the standard for biking distance by asserting that cars are the least efficient over short distances in terms of fuel use.
“Closuring” move: compelled students to draw the same conclusions by delivering an indisputable fact or agreeable moral guideline. For example, the educator emphasized that planning is important to reducing environmental footprint.
This study has several limitations. Due to the limited scale of this study (only 2 case studies), the identified moves do not encompass all types of educator actions with the capacity to shape political discourse within ESE. Using the moves identified in this research does not guarantee a particular learning environment, and also does not guarantee specific learning outcomes for students. Additionally, this research only investigated how the educators' actions impacted the learning environment, and not how educators' actions impacted the students' learning itself. Finally, the study authors did not include some information about participants that may have provided important context, such as the number of students in each case or their education level. A similar study undertaken with different case studies and in a different location may have different results.
This study is a resource for practitioners to assist in reflection on how they deal with political discourse in ESE programs. Educators should consider what kind of learning environment they want to create: a non-political “schooling” environment, an “emancipatory” environment that may include conflict, or somewhere in between. Practitioners should be aware of the actions described by this research that can facilitate the intended political tone.
The Bottom Line
<p>Environmental and sustainability education (ESE) inherently intersects with political issues and provides a valuable space for students to address political topics and engage in political discourse. This study developed an approach to classify actions by ESE educators that may have influenced the politicized nature of learning environments. This approach was applied to data from two previously conducted case studies of ESE activities in Belgium, one of which represented a politicized environment and the other a de-politicized environment. The authors identified 4 politicizing actions (controversy creating, hierarchical, inclusive-exclusive, public-private) and 4 de-politicizing actions (reinstating, norm installing, rationalizing, closuring) used by the educators in each case. These identified actions can be employed by ESE practitioners to facilitate or mitigate political discourse within their learning environments.</p>
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