In this closing chapter, we provide a summary of the previous ten chapters. Each chapter has addressed different perspectives of human relationships with the natural environment and with the more-than-human world, which are shown to be relevant to education for sustainable development. In this anthology, we have encountered contexts from South Africa, Canada, Sweden, and Australia and even contexts of imagined places and documented art projects. Not least, we have encountered the context of our contemporary situation itself, with reference to the ongoing climate emergency and mass extinction. The authors have brought our attention to sustainability issues, implicitly and explicitly, some in more well-known ways and others by using more surprising approaches. We have encountered approaches that include the art of being and sensing, inquiry-based teaching and learning with children and young people with regard to their place-based opportunities and challenges, and also an approach that includes the position of facing an uncertain future ecology while creating hope. In retrospect, this anthology instantiates a collaborative effort that spans across nations and scientific disciplines. As editors, we are most grateful for this international and interdisciplinary collaboration. This anthology deals with the problematic situation we have positioned ourselves in by overexploiting the planet’s resources. Regarding this fateful situation, intertwined themes are made visible in the chapters, with reference to belonging and sensing, critical thinking, and acting. Furthermore, the authors acknowledge the despair and anguish the current condition creates and, yet, they also offer us hope. These intertwined themes connect despair with hope, anxiety with possible ways of action, true wonderment with criticality, ecology with art, theory with practice, education with society, and, as alarming as it might sound, human existence with the collapse of humanity.

Reading and engaging with the chapters included in this anthology moves us to a point where dichotomies can no longer be accepted. Instead, it is made clear that we (as educators, researchers, and citizens) have to embrace the complexity, the sharp edges, the fuzziness, and the contradictions that our shared situation is constituted of. In this way, each chapter presents a narrative that argues that we must become cognizant of the broad picture of our current place in human history. In other words, we are doomed to encounter life and life’s premises with open eyes, not as a matter of surrendering to the whims of fate, but instead with an attitude of approaching life and life’s premises with dignity. The philosopher Martin Hägglund (2019) suggests that human beings are “reconciled with being alive, but for that very reason, we are not reconciled to live unworthy lives” (p. 369). Drawing on Hägglund, we need to hold our gaze steady when we observe the reality of disrupted ecosystems, frightening climate change, and the extinction of species. “We are what we do and we can do things differently,” writes Hägglund (2019, p. 20). In this light, the task of a democratic society that takes the challenges of climate change, mass extinction, and socio-ecological action seriously remains to be completed.

When one is confronted with a holistic overview of the situation that faces humankind, one comes to realize, understand, and oppose the mechanisms that drive constant economic growth and overconsumption which is underpinned by capitalism. In line with the economist Thomas Piketty (2014), we need to understand how extreme wealth is produced and maintained and realize why wealth has become so concentrated among so few people. The location of such great wealth in such a small percentage of the population, the increased gap between the rich and the poor, intergenerational poverty, and the fragility of democracy and the environment, among other things, influence the provision of education in wicked ways (Comber, 2017). Too many areas where children and young people now grow up are characterized by residential segregation based on their inhabitants’ social and/or migration background. In addition to this dire situation, many students, including immigrant children and adolescents, encounter unequal school systems that are characterized by standardized tests and discourses that are characterized by deficiency.

For decades, New Public Management (NPM) has been implemented as the solution for all kinds of problems within our economic, political, legal, and educational systems. The solution has come in the form of measurements, examinations, and standardizations. The last point urges us to critically scrutinize the ideology behind NPM and, more specifically, the ways that students are assessed. This includes what conclusions can be drawn from global assessment programs, for example, the PISAFootnote 1 assessment program. Sjøberg (2019) accurately highlights the naivety of defining high scores for reading, mathematics, and science as predictors of a specific country’s future economic competitiveness (as PISA does). The PISA project does not take into account the great variety of languages, cultures, and countries or the local curricula, current and topical issues that populate the participating schools, and pupils’ lifeworlds. In this way, the PISA test is narrow and subjective in its design and irrelevant with regard to teaching methods and the underlying pedagogy for education for sustainable development.

We need to transcend ideologies that claim that learning and knowledge development is easily measured when the truth is that it is a complex phenomenon and is always integrated within the unique person of the actual student. As educators, researchers, and citizens, we need to act seriously and in a compassionate manner for the sake of present and future generations, and we must do this in collaboration with the younger generation. This anthology recognizes that socio-ecological pedagogies from children and young people’s perspectives lie at the heart of a sensible and democratic education. This means encountering dilemmas regarding the climate crisis and backlashes on democracy while simultaneously imagining solutions for these problems.

Adopting a holistic perspective also entails an appreciation of macro- and meso-perspectives and the inclusion of micro-perspectives. The small things that we might turn our attention to can be a cascade of silver in a stretch of water or the patterns of solidified lava on a tree trunk. The performance of such acts of appreciation includes “being”; in order to sense the nuances of color and shape and the true wonderment that this creates within us as human beings. Drawing on Aristotle, the philosopher Jonna Bornemark (2020) introduces the concept of “wonderment” as a specific instance of not-knowing. The Greek word thaumazein (meaning “to wonder”) refers to “experiencing without yet having reached a full understanding.” The hermeneutic philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1975), in turn, describes the interplay of (i) perceptive experiencing and (ii) processed experiencing in how they allow us to reach new horizons. Returning to Bornemark, undoubtedly we face new horizons of not-knowing, as instantiated by the climate crisis and the pandemic of COVID-19. Simultaneously, we have access to knowledge, which is important to us if we are to face these new horizons without fear. (Fig. 12.1)

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Facing new horizons

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Our involvement in the development of this anthology has entailed an educational journey that has challenged our preconceptions and ideas of what we thought this book would be about. Each author has revealed new horizons and new insights which can play a crucial role in education. It should be emphasized that the ideas that we share here are missing from many current discussions on children’s education and the educational systems’ responsibility toward children. These aspects concern the art of belonging, sensing, and hoping; the necessary approaches of critical thinking, social justice, and action competence; and lastly, the existential stance of creating hope in a vanishing world.

Belonging, Sensing, and Hoping

Several of the chapters emphasize a sense of belonging with the world as a whole. This includes a sense of belonging with significant places, the more-than-human world, and other human beings from the past, present, and future. Many questions are raised in this time of ecological crisis, and many are yet to be answered. This emergency has also led to a crisis of consciousness, and we are thus forced to ask whether there any existing paths forward left, through which we can engage in acts of being, belonging, and, indeed, acts of hoping?

Vicky Kelly explores in her contribution the ways we might find pathways that allow for “becoming Indigenous to Mother Earth” and find kinship with all our relationships. Participation with the Earth is needed by every community. As with every other living organism, being human is a movement between the individual and the collective. We are part of numerous collectives, some that are quite enduring, others less so. These collectives are grounded in social-cultural patterns as well as in environmental and biological systems. From the individual’s perspective, each person is simultaneously separated from and part of various collectives. When you look at yourself in different contexts, you can discover habitual ways of feeling, thinking, and behaving and thereby gain a different perspective in your life (Taranczewski, 2018). When you know who you are and what has shaped you, it becomes easier to know what you want and to develop creative solutions. The key is thus to acknowledge the power of “consciousness in action,” Taranczewski (2018) contends. As Kelly points out, this process includes environmental and spiritual ecologies, as one becomes resonate with and attuned to one’s place.

Jan van Boeckel expresses a similar philosophy: Knowing the landscape is to recognize life and existence—human life and universal existence. Multimodal artmaking is one way of exploring connecting patterns, individual narratives, and the natural world. Such activities might help us feel situated in the landscape and feel connected with the natural environment. Wilson and Snæbjörnsdóttir further clarify this point by arguing that artmaking and the reception of art may be essential aspects of a sense of belonging in the world and a sense of empowerment. One way to gain a sense of belonging is to combine the arts with an exploration of the environment. Through the arts and various forms of aesthetic expression, learners at all levels of education can be invited to places to see and explore, feel, touch, smell, hear, and sense the more-than-human world. (Fig. 12.2)

Fig. 12.2
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Sensing the more-than-human world

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Ecological aesthetic education can thus play a crucial role in activating change, Wallen claims (2012). Ecological aesthetic education is grounded in ecological ethics and emphasizes the interrelated connections between the biological, physical, historical, political, and cultural aspects of ecosystems. Environmental artists are committed to a respectful and caring approach to the natural environment and motivate social-culture change. In educational settings, art can be considered as “transformative learning,” which can impact the learner’s identity formation. It can also assist human beings in reimagining new kinds of selves, enabling changes in attitude, and challenging fixed patterns of thinking. Such changes depend on self-reflecting on one’s understandings, beliefs, and preconceptions (Mezirow, 2000). Art in education can offer teaching and learning pathways that involve sensitive and passionate exploratory connections with existential, philosophical, and psychological interpretations of life (Häggström, 2019, 2020). The concept of “wonderment” (Gadamer, 1975; Bornemark, 2020) has been invoked a way of experiencing by the phenomenologists Rehorick and Bentz (2008). “Wonderment” challenges our sense of taken-for-granted-ness, in phenomenological terms, and allows us to see and experience the world in new ways. Nevertheless, wonderment too is a deliberate act one may choose to engage in or not. It is, as Rehorick and Bentz (2008) claim, a “deliberate act of curiosity” (p. 6). Children readily demonstrate this capacity if we allow them to. However, as grown-ups, we can revisit and reconnect to this capacity through play. Along with Moscovici’s (2000) and his fellow scholars’ words, we can discover something unfamiliar in the familiar as we make the familiar unfamiliar. The unfamiliar is exposed when two different cultures meet, for example, when members within a society create novel understandings of a phenomenon and when a minority group communicates their perspective to the majority. Creativity may be made possible through various encounters between the known and the unknown. However, as Wilson and Snæbjörnsdóttir point out, we start at a disadvantage since capitalism (as an overarching system) encourages consumerism, social inequality, and environmental decline.

Critical Thinking, Action Competence, and Social Justice

Several of the chapters in this anthology address how one might facilitate students’ decision-making to spur them into taking a stance. In this context, the concepts of “agency” and “empowerment” are crucial. The environmental threats we face today force us to act, and we need to discuss how, who, when, where, and for whom we are to act, in line with critical literacy approaches (e.g., Freire, 1970; Janks, 2010; Vasquez, 2001). Drawing on Janks (2010), critical literacy entails reflecting on what ideologies are produced, i.e., exploring reasons for specific claims and viewing media and texts from different perspectives and using empathy and imagination when doing this. To support and enhance children’s and young people’s “action competence,” we should note that they depend on such opportunities, including the consideration of various perspectives and solutions, including the possibility of redesigning texts (Schmidt & Skoog, 2019). In this way, critical literacy is not only concerned with analyzing texts or judging the source; it is also a way of being, living, learning, and teaching. It is an awareness of the fact that texts and ideologies can be changed—that things can be done differently (Vasquez et al., 2019). (Fig. 12.3)

Fig. 12.3
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Things can be done differently

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Children need “action competence” to inform the choices that they make. The environmental activist Greta Thunberg (2019) has urged politicians and the adult population in general to take action. She is also quite forthright when she blames previous leaders and today’s leaders for not transforming the world and adequately addressing the current climate crisis. Thunberg (2019, p 24) stated in her speech in Davos: “I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.” “Action competence” relies on the existence of creatively designed spaces within educational practices, where dialogic approaches to thinking, talking, listening, arguing, and negotiating play a crucial role. However, in this context, a balancing act must be performed on the teacher’s part, who must take into consideration attentive listening, the broadening of learners’ repertoires for partaking of the educational practice, and being generous with follow-up questions in order to encourage students to develop their own ideas (Schmidt et al., 2021).

Perhaps rightfully, there has been some criticism of the process of “responsibilization” regarding children. For example, it has been argued that “action competence” determines what is to be acted on, experienced, and felt (Ideland, 2016). In her studies, Ideland has found that there is a notion of the “ideal action-competent child” among educators and scholars who view action-competent children as “participating genuinely, having authentic experiences, and producing feelings as empowerment, empathy, and optimism, but s/he is also well-planned and reasonable” (Ibid, p. 95). Ideland’s critique is in agreement with those scholars who have criticized the concept of “Education for Sustainable Development” in various ways (e.g., Wals, 2015; Kopnina & Cherniak, 2015; Jickling et al., 2018). Another aspect that should be accounted for is the pressure that is put on the teacher and the underlying aims of teaching “action competence” (Breiting & Mogensen, 1999). This difficult balancing act consists, on the one hand, of empowering the young student and on the other hand, of not dictating to the student how they must act and feel in order to be a moral, environmentally friendly person.

The challenge for schools and the education system as a whole is how they are to successfully move beyond decontextualized and specific activities, such as “cleaning the schoolyard” and move forward toward working with visions for the future and imaginative abilities, something that has been recently termed as futures literacy (Larsen et al., 2020). Miller (2018) argues that futures literacy (or being futures literate) depends on the ability to imagine and to anticipate, which speaks of being part of contexts as well as of feeling kinship with others—humans and other animals (Häggström & Schmidt, 2020). This ability is also a prerequisite for developing “action competence.” The concept of “sharing” is essential to this development; sharing lifeworlds, lived places, experiences, and sharing the present. If we want children to be agents of change for the future, they need first to experience that they are listened to and that they feel confident that they can become agents of change in the present. Next, we should note that the agency of change and the agency of redesign depend on critical approaches that support social justice. This should also include socio-ecological considerations. For this to be achieved, the interrelationship between (i) the ways that ideologies that lie within texts and media are redistributed in and outside of the classroom; (ii) the ways that children and young people are listened to and the resources that they possess are recognized in and outside of the classroom; and lastly, (iii) the ways that children and young people can represent themselves in and outside of the classroom are accepted as crucial components for equality (Fraser, 1997; Schmidt, 2018). The latter crucial components are exemplified by Paige, Haggerty, and Comber in their contribution by how the class teacher’s sensibility to the design and performance of teaching about the local wetlands is described and the description of how the students can be engaged in these processes. By being exposed to the teacher’s agency (Priestley et al., 2013), the student George is given opportunities for agency in the present time. This young student presents himself as a spokesperson in front of his peers and adults within a local context while accessing a powerful literacy. This narrative on education clearly moves beyond the “PISA syndrome” and focuses on the lifeworlds of children, what they regard as being important, and what they want to learn about, and draw, write about, and tell their community about, instead. This narrative sheds light on the content that young children are learning to write and read from—a content that not only consists of letters and sounds but also must matter, as per Freire’s (1970) famous remark concerning literacy which entails “reading the word and the world.”

James explores the theme of “water pedagogy” in the context of increasing water inequality, which is an ongoing crisis around the world (Calow & Mason, 2014). Calow and Mason (2014) claim that development and change regarding water scarcity should build on existing entrepreneurial capacity at the local level. James’ study resonates between ecological and social concerns and describes the nature of the transformative potentials realized in these concerns. Jagers, Rivas-Drake, and Williams (2019) describe transformative social and emotional competences as a sum of five competencies: (i) self-awareness, (ii) self-management, (iii) social awareness, (iv) relationship skills, and (v) responsible decision-making. These competencies are viewed as interrelated, synergistic, and essential for developing justice-oriented citizens. “Identity building,” “agency,” and “belonging” are key aspects of the transformative process. “Culture,” “ethnicity,” “socioeconomic status,” and “gender,” in turn, are central aspects regarding the nature of one’s citizenship. Critical education is one way to promote emancipation, James argues. We would like to add that the pedagogy described in this chapter is essential for imagining a future that integrates and facilitates educational achievements among students and promotes increased social justice.

In many educational settings, there is a strong tendency toward the decontextualization of subjects, i.e., the learning of one subject at a time, and often from a deductive approach. Additionally, Schmidt and Häggström note that there is a strong tendency toward positioning literacy education as being equal to the teaching of phonics in the dominant language. This situation is compounded by individualistic orientations that are further isolated from students’ social and cultural practices (Street, 1993). As a counter story, the narrative on education in several of the chapters within this anthology highlights holistic and place-based educational practices in which several subjects, for example, biology, art, and Swedish, are integrated in and outside the classroom. These practices also integrate various modalities; for example, practices of literacy, like coding, functional text use, and meaning-making, become integrated with one another and with various forms of expression.

Such counter stories thus also move beyond the PISA syndrome by espousing a pedagogy that pays less attention to global standards for teaching and learning quality and instead focuses on education situated in real contexts and with opportunities for children to participate by using all of their senses and making-meaning abilities. This pedagogy emphasizes fostering “emotional balance, compassion, tolerance, self-discipline, resilience, contentment and other fundamental human qualities,” as humanitarian Matthieu Ricard (in Chatterjee et al., 2020, p. 7) describes it.

In addition, Philip Payne claims that the problem of embodied dissonance lies at the core of the ecological crisis that we face today. Due to the current increase in ecological crises, vast numbers of plant and animal species are being exterminated. Consequently, biodiversity is being lost, and the biological variety of life on Earth is alarmingly decreasing. New Materialism (as a form of pedagogy) can enable embodied, relational connections to the surrounding environment and enable us to discover new, creative ways to support the child’s comprehension of the world. Reddington and Price (2018) describe this “material turn” as a “pedagogical framework that places the material body and the emergent child at the centre of educational and community practice.” New Materialism pays attention to the child’s mediated actions. Responding to Bennett’s (2010) claim that “the environment is actually inside human bodies and minds, and then proceeds politically, technologically, scientifically, in everyday life,” Margaret Somerville and Theresa McGavock followed how Australian children actually are becoming with fires and with injured animals. Belonging, sensing, and hoping, in the context of the Australian bushfires, is described as a fundamental matter of existing. In research on sustainability within early childhood education, one area of study has paid attention to children’s rights and the role of resilient structures and power relationships, including the importance of the child’s community experience and active participation as citizens (Weldemariam, 2020). This has led to the promotion of the child as an active agent and creator of meaning and has highlighted the importance of paying attention to the child’s opinions and perspectives. The issue of the child’s perspective has also been the incentive for finding a pedagogy that integrates critical engagement and new perspectives on the concept of “place as assemblage” (Duhn, 2012). Such a perspective may allow educators to bridge the gap between different subjects. This entails that we must come to understand both the forces that create places and the forces that influence pedagogy. One way of approaching such an understanding is to view “agency” as an entangled becoming and thereby observe that children coexist “in a state of becoming-with” (Lenz Taguchi et al., 2010, p. 87). In their chapter, Somerville and McGavock exemplify the child’s embeddedness in a local place, which has been their everyday environment, and how the child builds partnerships with the planet. Reinertsen (2016) describes this process in terms of how the child is engaged in “becoming Earth.”

From a postmodern perspective, environmental education needs to be sensitive to the “ill-defined nature of emerging key concepts such as biodiversity and sustainability” (Dreyfus et al., 1998). There exists no single perspective on “biodiversity” or “sustainability” that exactly describes these concepts in a way that remains accurate in all contexts. However, these concepts are frequently used in public debates and in educational fields. Learning processes that indeed are “bodily driven” should encourage students so that they can “construct, transform, critique, and emancipate their world in an existential way” (Dreyfus et al., 1998, p. 158).

Creating Hope in a Vanishing World

Another common theme that emerges in this anthology is how educators can include each learner’s existentiality at the individual level and the cultural level. This issue includes addressing environmental anxiety and despair, and questions that touch upon life and death. An illustrative example of this can be found when the very young children in Sommerville’s and McGavock’s chapter made drawings of the devastating bushfires in Australia. During their work, the children remarked: “This is the fire I drove through” and “This Koala will go to heaven.” After some time had passed after the fires, one child observes: “Now three leaves have popped up.” These children’s comments show that, through their education, they are given access to spaces in which they can take in the realities of a disrupted ecosystem—in this case, in terms of the bushfire—from their own perspectives. One crucial aspect of this process is the presence of their teachers. It is essential that the children be listened to, and their teachers confirm their ideas.

The question of how we can address existentiality with children and young people while simultaneously encouraging a sense of belonging, hope, and faith (despite current world conditions) is crucial, now and for the future. We believe this to be a matter that cannot be solved by designing a specific pedagogical model or educational system but rather a matter that is reliant on us cultivating our ability as educators and researchers of “being present.” To create hope in a vanishing world entails allowing for processes of “not-knowing” (Bornemark, 2020) and knowing how to “educate for uncertainty” (Blenkinsop & Ford, 2018). Such goals are challenging, and both teachers and students will need support to deal with various aspects of uncertainty and a lack of control. Such approaches will inevitably include feelings of uncertainty.

Indeed, the climate crisis and everything that follows from it is real, as is human anxiety, fear, and existential angst. Sam Mickey refers to Besley and Peters (2020), who argue that a philosophy of education needs to engage with present issues which have practical, economic, political, philosophical, existential, moral, and ethical consequences. The present environmental emergency that we are all faced with calls for a renewed and transformed existentialism, one that is oriented toward ecology and the unavoidable relationship between human and the more-than-human world. This renewal is thus a renewal that is called coexistence, Mickey argues. For this to occur, transformative learning and transformative teaching will be needed. Existential education can thus be rebellious, radical, and resist principals of reason that do not admit to the current state of affairs. Existential education seeks to expose hidden curricula and to make compassionate learning situations accessible. (Fig. 12.4)

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Coexistence with a vanishing tree

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In our current “age of environmental breakdown” (Laybourn-Langton et al., 2019), we need an education system that not only represents young students but also guides them into the world before holding the adult world to account (Arendt, 2006). Responsible educators should guide the children for whom they are responsible and show them that we live in a shared world. Note that this entails that we share experiences with each other. Educators should prepare their students so that they understand the meaning of common sense and the difference between truth and lies. Specifically, this requires that educators reassure students that others also share their perception of the world. In the spirit of Arendt, teachers should guide their young charges as they enter the public world and grow from private individuals into public citizens. In this context, we note that Berkowitz (2020) argues that a teacher’s role is to teach about the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.

Maria Ojala argues that it is important to learn how to live with ambivalence, and she even encourages an active form of hope, despite contemporary sustainability issues. “Hope,” however, proves to be a complex concept; it may lead to unrealistic optimism and less engagement. However, it may also help people do something productive in response to their concerns regarding the global future. One solution is that we should encounter these problems head-on to deal with how serious they are. For educators, this entails working with a problem-based pedagogy and laying a foundation for hope. In times of global crisis, as we face today, this approach places a great deal of responsibility on teachers to find a “golden way” of teaching. Firstly, they have to transform their own ways of looking at the world, themselves, and education in general. Secondly, they need to know their pupils if they are to pay attention to their stories and experiences. What are their circumstances, their needs, wishes, strengths, and shortcomings? Thirdly, educators can support community-building efforts by inviting local actors and organizations to the school. However, most importantly, educators can create a community within the classroom. This is a way of building a network that is crucial for the student’s success. Finally, educators should maintain reciprocal expectations of both their students and themselves. One of Fries’s main points is that humanity needs to transgress boundaries that we perceive as normal. Enabling laughter during times of uncertainty and loss creates a powerful “safety net” that helps to cultivate resilience and courage, Petherick (2020) claims.

Socio-ecological Education in the Anthropocene Period

This anthology illuminates the fact that socio-ecological education in the Anthropocene phase must rely on a holistic pedagogy, taking into consideration deepened aspects of being, existing, and learning as a human being. As such, this pedagogy must always be placed in relation to the more-than-human world. In this anthology, a holistic pedagogy is portrayed as the intertwining of belonging, sensing, hoping, critical thinking, social justice and action competence, and the existential stance of creating hope in a vanishing world. Taken together, these dispositions speak of transformation against all odds. We invoke the term transformation to refer to the ways in which children and young people are inspired to reflect and develop through education. By doing this, they may come to increase their knowledge and enhance their ability to address dilemmas and solve problems. Such a transformation implies an epistemological intertwinement of knowledge as meaning-making which facilitates a multifaceted approach with connections to other subjects, one’s own experiences, and one’s surrounding society. It also implies factual knowledge regarding what we know right now and knowledge as “not-knowing,” i.e., knowing that one has yet another horizon to discover, and of knowledge as sensing and feeling the conditions of our whole existence. Inspired by Thunberg (2019), we agree that we all have to overcome the misguided idea that each person is too small to make a difference; every single person counts, and every action counts. We have to imagine a future and future societies. For this to occur, people’s thought patterns need to change—and convincing them to do this will be challenging. We thus propose a holistic pedagogy that takes children’s and young people’s thoughts, emotions, and questions seriously. We call for inquiry-based and sensitive approaches (as part of this pedagogy) if this transformation is to be made possible.