Today, the dream of modernisation has spread throughout the world. More specifically, it is about realising a cosmopolitan way of life in which universal wealth and enlightenment has become the ultimate goal of mankind. To achieve this ideal, innovative technology, industrialisation and mass education are considered crucial. In this way, every person on earth should be able to profit from the benefits of science, technology and the recourses that the earth has to offer. In Swillens & Vlieghe (2020) we discuss how this is a castle in the air because it has become clear that our world cannot support the modern ideal of endless progress. Moreover, the call for an 'ecological turn' has become stronger in recent decades. Central to the ecological discourse of both international research and policy is the emphasis on the important role of education. However, not as a function of endless progress, but as a means of promoting sustainable development. We argue that in this ecological turn, an instrumental way of thinking about education has become dominant. More specifically, in much of the contemporary research, policy and initiatives, sustainability education is primarily understood as an instrument to impart a predefined set of knowledge, skills and attitudes (cf. sustainability competences) to future sustainable citizens (e.g. Aguayo & Eames, 2017; Fuertes-Camacho et al., 2019). In other words, sustainability education is mainly conceptualised as 'individual training' (Holfelder, 2019). We argue that these kind of studies, practices and policies, despite their good intentions, still conceptualise both 'temporality' (1) and 'spatiality' (2) in a Modern way. More specifically, (1) the present is understood as instrumental for a sustainable future that we already have in mind and that can be achieved by training people in the 'right' way and (2) our living environments are seen as merely passive settings of human action. This leads to an educational 'timespace' in which it is assumed that people can easily manipulate both the arrow of time (Decuypere, Hoet & Vandenabeele, 2019) and the state of their passive environment (cf. Taylor, 2017). We suggest that this attitude makes us insensitive to (1) the unforeseen possibilities in the present and (2) the capacity of our (human and non-human) environment to affect us in various ways. Therefore, this study focuses on sustainability practices that succeed in (temporarily) suspending such a Modern timespace. Put differently, our challenge is the designing of an alternative spatiotemporal framework for sustainability education, in which the possibilities in the here-and-now can be fully explored again.

Drawing inspiration from Bruno Latour’s recent work (e.g. 2017) on Critical Zone Observatories (CZO), we investigated how in the Flemish suburban town of Zwijnaarde, citizens have started to become affected by the condition of two concrete zones in their town: (1) an extremely dangerous road with heavy trucks driving very close to a school and that is being studied by citizen-scientists and (2) an abandoned brownfield that is being reshaped into a communal garden. This empirical based theoretical study aims to describe how the local inhabitants of this town become attentive for the difficulties as well as the potentialities of both these places. Taking our clue from Bruno Latour’s work (2014), we consider both zones as critical, implying that these are fragile (different claims are made on its destination), but at the same time, educational interventions are able to strongly influence its present (and future) dynamics.

This sets up the right conditions to answer the following research question: 

How do the central educational dynamics in both initiatives enable an attention for the here-and-now and make it possible to open new, more sustainable futures for these places? 

As mentioned above, the case-study in this inquiry involves a suburban town in Flanders, which is opportunistically selected after several explorative talks had been organized with a diverse set of people involved in organizing sustainability activities in this town. Following this explorative talks two place-based sustainability initiatives were selected. To unearth the educational dynamics of both initiatives, we applied the methodological instrument of ‘post-human anecdotes’ (Adams & Thompson, 2016). Post-human anecdotes are narrative tools that aim to reconstruct a situation through lived details. More specifically, these narratives aim to create descriptions of how different people and things (like study materials and gardening tools) become intertwined in concrete situations. In this way, we constructed condensed descriptions of a variety of situations. More concretely, by conducting participatory observations and semi structured we gain insight into the lived and intertwined experiences of about fifteen selected citizens who are engaged in one or both initiatives and who we have been followed for a period of four months. It is important to mention that these anecdotes are not merely a reflection of something but that they play a role in actively 'remaking' concrete situations. This of course contrasts with the figure of the modest witness of modernity who considers himself endowed with the power to establish objective and non-contestable facts. Our analysis is directed towards the constituted relations between the present and the future of these places as well as the kind of (reciprocal) interactions that these citizens have with the current condition of their living environment – and thus are being affected by this condition. More concretely, we focus on how the intertwinement of citizens and concrete objects like air quality measurement instruments and data maps, constitutes a particular, educational timespace. The data-analysis is executed through a constant comparison, modification and sharpening of emerging theory (as described in Major & Savin-Baden, 2013). The analysis of data has been conducted with the assistance of the qualitative analysis software NVivo.

The findings provide a theoretical account of the central educational dynamics that are being constituted in the two initiatives that we have studied. Additionally, also a first exploration becomes possible on how Latour’s notion of the ‘critical zone’ may contribute to defining and conceptualizing specific contested places that are very relevant for environmental and sustainability educational research. This research project thus offers an important contribution to the discussion about the role of education in designing sustainable living environments. The focus lies especially on the potential of less recognized educational practices outside formal learning contexts. More specific, the study provides an empirical based theoretical account on the possibilities of small scale, place-based sustainability initiatives as an educational alternative for an instrumental, human-centered approach in sustainability education (research). We conclude that an attention to the educational dynamics of both initiatives that we have studied, fosters a temporal, and spatial shift in sustainability education (research), from focusing on (1) development (a steady movement towards a planned future) and (2) human stewardship (the capability of people to shape their passive living environments) to (1) what we call co-sperity (a collective hope in the present) and (2) inhabitation (an attached and undetermined engagement with the dynamic of one’s habitat).

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