Currently reading Van Poeck et al. (2016) on “Revisiting the democratic paradox of environmental and sustainability education: Sustainability issues as matters of concern”

Not gonna lie, when already the second line of an abstract contains reference to some guy-who-I-have-never-heard-of’s “conceptual distinction” of something, I find it very hard to motivate myself to continue reading. On the other hand, the title sounds so relevant that I still did it. This is my summary of what I understand from Van Poeck et al. (2016)’s “Revisiting the democratic paradox of environmental and sustainability education: Sustainability issues as matters of concern“.

The motivation for their study is that a problem in environmental and sustainability education: despite trying to work for a sustainable world, “we do not and cannot know for sure what the most sustainable way of living is“. What are we teaching if we are caught in a wicked problem where there are no right answers and everybody has different ideas about what the right direction is, there is an urgent need to act, AND we believe that we should be listening to all those different ideas? That’s the tension between a normative and pluralistic approach, that they describe as “a sharp opposition between two extremes: on the one hand, an instrumental approach that sees the factual account of the state of the planet as a non-negotiable basis for normative guidelines on how to think and act and, on the other hand, a pluralistic approach that understands pluralism as a sheer fact of plurality, resulting in a relativistic tolerance that grants every opinion equal value“.

They then explain their theoretical framework: Latour (that guy from line 2 in the abstract) uses the terms “matters of fact” (facts that “speak for themselves“) and “matters of concern” (“these highly complex, uncertain, contested, historically situated, far reaching, risky and richly diverse states of affairs in which human and non-human entities are intimately entangled“). Matters of concern are situated as the “fair position” between the facts on the one hand, and the “fairy position” of “‘mere’ values, opinions, preferences” on the other. Van Poeck et al. (2016) write that Latour “uses the concept of matter of concern […] to point towards the complex interdependencies between nature and society that make up current sustainability and other contested issues“. So in a nutshell, there is really no such thing as a “fact”, because that always depends on what the question was and how it was answered. So far, so not super surprising.

But then what’s next I find really off-putting. They write “The history of climate modelling, for instance, shows how particular contextually bound concerns such as globalism, prediction and simulation gave rise to a ‘state of affectedness’ between the makeshift issue of a‘global climate’ on the one hand and a bunch of ‘climate modellers’ on the other hand. This state of affectedness gradually led to the current scientific understanding of climate change as a global-scale problem caused by the universal physical properties of greenhouse gasses“. As a former climate modeller — why use language like “a bunch“, are we trying to discredit them here? Also the scientific understanding is misrepresented: The problem is not “caused by the universal physical properties of greenhouse gasses“, it is caused by too high concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. And why that is perceived as a problem, the authors explain by “attachments” that people have and that might be conflicting: some people don’t want to lose their homes and livelyhoods due to sealevel rise or other impacts of climate change, others don’t want to change the way they live. But, the authors promise that they “will show, the concepts of ‘matter of concern’ and ‘attachment’ allow us to articulate how educational practices can move beyond the dichotomy between the naïve objectivism underpinning instrumental education (teaching matters of fact about sustainability issues) and the naïve subjectivism that often goes with a pluralistic approach (the cultivation of a sheer plurality of values, opinions and preferences).”

They do that using three cases:

• Workshops on promoting ecological behaviors, where the educators see their role as educating in people in good behaviours, not discussing what makes a behavior better than another; “Going into controversies elaborately is at odds with the discourse embraced by Ecolife which frames sustainable development as ‘a
  positive story’ that creates opportunities for win–win situations.” So ultimately, “[p]articipants got the message that it is up to them to decide how to deal with the suggested behavioural precepts, yet, against the
  backdrop of taken for granted, indisputable factual claims about a sustainable world and ecologically sound behaviour.“
• Nature experiences on biodiversity, with the double goal of “transferring knowledge about nature (mainly through activities to study the biotope) and offering pupils opportunities to experience nature (mainly via guided walks in the reserve)“; knowledge being acquired through finding, measuring, observing, using predescribed methods (so for example water quality determined by a chemical analysis, not the presence of cute fishies); and experiences designed to convey the value that people are supposed to see in nature.
• Documentary films about sustainability issues, where during discussions after screenings, “the centre neither approached the issues it addressed as indisputable matters of fact, nor as mere matters of value“, giving participants in discussion plenty of time to elaborate and clarify conflicting viewpoints. “The centre was reluctant towards translating sustainability into well-defined claims or standards (‘do’s and don’ts’) but, on the contrary, preferred to approach sustainable development as a continuous quest for what can be regarded ‘sustainable’ in very concrete situations” (my emphasis because I really like this!)

And actually it is really that bolded sentence above that I find most useful because it seems to be good advice when dealing with a wicked problem: Don’t try to find a perfect solution that doesn’t exist, try to do the best thing with the information you have in a concrete situation. The discussion of people oscillating between normative approaches and pluralistic approaches that often fall into something like “well, you have to decide for yourself” is also really interesting, because that is of course not what pluralistic approaches are supposed to be about, which would be about practicing democracy in the process.

Which reminds me, I am reading this article because I want to learn more about democracy in sustainability teaching. The democratic paradox becomes clear: We want good things to happen, but we don’t believe in forcing people. So what we then need is “a time and space where […] a multiplicity of positions can be explored while switching perspective from one to another” as well as being clear and open about our “attachments“, while exploring “‘what it is that we should be concerned
about’ in the light of the issues at stake“.

Makes a lot of sense. Not very directly actionable for a teacher, but at least I have now read this paper and can cite it! :-D

Van Poeck, K., Goeminne, G., & Vandenabeele, J. (2016). Revisiting the democratic paradox of environmental and sustainability education: Sustainability issues as matters of concern. Environmental Education Research, 22(6), 806-826.

Featured image from a recent dip, and here is what happened after…

Sat in the sun for a bit.

Enjoyed the weather.

Started walking home.

Got distracted by the water again.

Sat down in the sun some more.

Looked at more water.

Walked some more.

Might have sat one last time before walking home…