One can wonder whether things have ever been any other than ‘post-normal’ when considering whether it is just scientific "facts [that] are [always] uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent" (Funtowicz & Ravetz, 1992, p.252). But rather than the problem resting in the absence of an ability to provide a universal response to the ‘wickedness’ of sustainability and scientific issues, perhaps the wickedness results at least in part from our collective inability to embrace the absence of a cultural and planetary ‘normal’ in the first place. In other words, through this paper we suggest that sustainability always operates as an interscaler or transboundary problem, that spans the global and which is local in its effect if not its ‘solutions.’ So, rather than theorizing the absence of a universal response to complex socio-scientific issues, we might concern ourselves with how sustainability issues are conceptualized, practiced, resisted, and addressed within and across places, and why that matters for educational research, policy, and pedagogy. To elaborate this focus we discuss the methodological framing that underpins a large scale comparative study of sustainability in formal education (K-12 and higher education). We have collected data from across all 13 provinces and territories in Canada, as well as begun to extend internationally our data collection and analysis. Data include policy texts; interviews with policy makers, sustainability staff, educators, students; survey responses; and photos of campus and school spaces and artifacts. The research examines influences on the development and enactment of sustainability in education policy, asking: (i) What role have various actors and networks had in initiating, implementing, and responding to existing policies (e.g., the roles of actors and networks in the travel of policy, and as enabled by technology and media)?, and (ii) To what extent are existing policies situated in relation to local place (e.g., land, culture, local policy environment)? The study thus aims to attend to the mobilities and place-specificities of the development of sustainability education policies, as well as how situated factors may influence their enactment (Ball, Braun, & Maguire, 2012; Heimans, 2014; McCann & Ward, 2012; Peck & Theodore, 2012; Tuck & McKenzie, 2015). Thus in engaging with these new theoretical approaches and data to consider policy as it forms, travels, and is practiced in and across place, we identify a need for greater attention to place in addressing questions of, and possible responses to, the ‘wickedness’ of socio-ecological challenges.

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