Following on “A transactional perspective on environmental and sustainability education research. Part I: Focus on pragmatic ethics”, the purpose of this symposium is to present a range of studies which build on pragmatic philosophy and use John Dewey’s transactional perspective on meaning-making and practical epistemologies for studies of environmental and sustainability education (ESE).

Since 2003 the research group SMED (Studies of Meaning-making in Educational Discourses) has been engaged in the development of a methodology for analysing meaning-making processes involving the introduction of different practical epistemologies within environmental and sustainability education. The methodology builds on Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy (Dewey, 1916, 1922, 1929, 1932, 1938) and especially his concept of transaction (Dewey & Bentley, 1949/1991). This perspective aims to overcome the methodological problems connected with the dualistic tendencies that trouble many other approaches to learning and classroom interactions. Within this approach meaning is not treated as something that exists within things themselves or in the minds of human beings, but is seen as the relations to the environment that are created in the processes of doing and undergoing the consequences of action (Garrison, 2001). Such coordination is not restricted to knowledge but also involves ethical and aesthetical relations to the environment. Learning can thus be investigated in terms of actions, within a set of different practical epistemologies.

In the second part of this symposium, we will explore and discuss pragmatist educational theory’s potential in view of investigating democratic and political issues related to ESE. Sustainability problems drastically affect our planet and its inhabitants. In addition, these issues are often very controversial, characterised as they are by a lack of certain and uncontested knowledge as well as a lack of agreement on the values and norms at stake and the desirability of proposed solutions. As such, they bring about complex and pressing political and democratic challenges. Facing the omnipresent controversy arising in the pursuit of sustainable development, ESE researchers emphasise the importance of paying attention to ‘the political’ (Mouffe 2005) within educational practices. They argue that it is crucial to be mindful of dissonant and conflicting voices and the way in which these are handled in teaching and learning (e.g. Sund and Öhman 2014). Furthermore, researchers have focused on education’s role in contributing to solving the societal and political problem of building a more sustainable world (e.g. Ferreira 2009).

Transactional analytical methods focusing on the continuous, simultaneous and reciprocal transformation of the self and the world are well suited for the study of democratic and political issues in ESE. In this symposium, we will focus on how democracy and the political are handled within educational practices as well as on how to investigate and understand political processes of striving for a more sustainable society as an educative process. Rudsberg, Öhman and Östman analyse the democratic dimension of classroom discussions using Transactional Argumentation Analysis. Their analysis of how the process of knowledge and value constitution is relocated from before to in the educational event, shows how students learn to ‘live democratically’ by participating in a pluralistic act of communication about value-related issues. Van Poeck, Block and Östman present a case study of an urban sustainability transition initiative that gathers a variety of actors in view of developing scenarios for a local food strategy based on short supply chains. Combining transactional analytical frameworks with dramaturgical analysis, they investigate how this political space serves as a space for experiential learning. Håkansson and Östman, finally, present the Political Moment Model: A transactional model developed in view of analysing how students make meaning of a poignant experience of the political in educational practice.

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