Pluralism is becoming like a ‘holy grail’ for researchers in environmental and sustainability education (ESE) research to tackle environmental and sustainable issues. In this paper we argue however that not much attention has been paid to the meaning of inescapable moments of decisions in pluralistic ESE-practices. The paper empirically explores these kinds of situations in educational practice as inescapable moments of decisions between conflicting possibilities in the context of ESE-pluralism. Thus, the paper is interested in how risks and opportunities emerge in meaning processes in a pluralistic ESE-practice when the notion of politics involves inclusionary and exclusionary processes of personal – emotionally invested – values.

Using Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe, we perceive the pluralistic ESE-approach as conflictual-oriented, which enable us to problematize the political dimension in educational situations. According to Mouffe, it is crucial to acknowledge the political in the field of politics. Mouffe recognizes decision making situations in a pluralistic context – i.e. politics – as an act of inclusion and exclusion, i. e. every decision is predicated on the exclusion of possibilities. Therefore, the practice of politics inevitably includes the political, i.e. conflicts and potential antagonism. Accordingly, we call the aforementioned inescapable decision making moments for ‘political moments’ (PM).  PM is inspired by Garrison et al (2014) who introduced “educative moment” in relation to situations when the students for example are suddenly struck by a moral reaction in a knowledge-learning practice, i.e. when an epistemological decision is suddenly and non-intentionally interpenetrated by morality. According to Garrison et al (2014) this is a moment of opportunity in education and can be used. It can be used as an educative moment since an educative moment do – because of the interpenetration and interrogation between different value spheres – include value conflicts, value criticism and value decision (Garrison et al. 2014, p. 17). It is in relation to these constructions we can find a more general argument for trying to use the occurrence of political moments as educative moments.

We use the term moments to highlight that the political has the immediacy of emotionally invested values being contested and even excluded; thereby a felt or embodied inclusionary and exclusionary process. PM is something that strikes you and not something that we can predict through a calculated ESE-practice.  Thus we regard a political moment– the inevitable act of exclusion in a conflictual decision – as a first-person experience of politics.   Moreover, PM recognizes that a mutual interrogation among epistemological-cognitive and aesthetical-emotional dimension in decisions (Garrision et al 2014). The paper explores how PM affects inter-human relations using a distinction between social relation and political relation (Warren 1996). A PM disrupts taken for granted and predictable social relations and turn them into uncertain and unpredictable political relations. Thus the plurality of equally possible choices turns into a moment of disruption of at least some social habits and everyday routines. In a community, as for example a classroom, this means that PM disrupts social habits and includes actual exclusions (if an undecidable decision is articulated) or imaginary exclusions (if the decision is non-articulated). Nevertheless, if the disruption is imaginary or actual it will have similar consequences (although actual disruptions will potentially have deeper impact), namely an experience of change of the assumed solidarity and communality.

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