In the field of research of sustainability education, a distinction is made between two phases, Education for Sustainable Development 1 and 2 (Vare & Schott, 2007). ESD 2 focuses on developing students’ capacity to make sensible choices and emphasizes their ability to analyze, question and critically discuss sustainability issues (Item & Scott, 2007: 194). This focus is justified by the need to refrain from imparting authoritative rules of action, which are, firstly, uncertain due to the unknown future (Wals, 2010: 144; Straume, 2019) and, secondly, do not fit well with an education system based on democratic values (Wals, 2010: 147). This argument is further developed by Rudsberg & Öhman (2010) who call for a focus on pluralistic meaning making as an essential component of education for sustainable development. Drawing on didactic and pragmatic theory, Öhman and Sund (2021) suggest that the goal of sustainability education is to develop students’ sustainable commitment. The concept of commitment is elaborated theoretically to consist of three interrelated aspects: an intellectual aspect, an emotional aspect, and a practical aspect. Commitment is understood ”in line with the didactic didactic concept of Bildung and the way in which teaching opens up a world for the student, thus opening the student for the world” (2021, p. 3083). The inclusion of emotional and action aspects into commitment as a Bildung aim finds a parallel in a study by Straume who, however, also in line with Öhman and Sund, underscores that “hope can be productive in the long term only when based on realistic assumptions and truth knowledge” (Straume, 2019, p.2).

In the paper, we based on data from 32 video club conversations examine Danish Mercantile upper secondary school students’ ability to analyze, question and critically discuss sustainability issues. We focus on their level of knowledge regarding sustainability issues and the way in which they question and critically discuss these issues.

The research question is:

What characterizes Danish upper secondary school students’ abilities to engage in conversations about sustainability in terms of complexity and dialogical markers and how does the characteristics relate to Education for Sustainable Development in line with the didactic tradition of Bildung?

Our paper is based on the field of research of sustainability education belonging to the phase of ESD 2 described above. According to this field of research the uncertainty about the future is, among other things, related to sustainability as a complex phenomenon, linking the complex understanding to the fact that sustainable issues include or refer to environmental and climatic aspects as well as social and economic aspects (Brundtland-Kommissionen, 1987). We link the complex understanding to the concepts of emotional and action aspects as described above.

Furthermore, we base our paper on the field of research on dialogic teaching, referring to Alexander, Reznitskaya, Mercer, et al. and others. According to this field of research, dialogic conversations in education have the potential to improve students’ ability to ask critical questions, listen carefully to the thoughts of their peers, formulate arguments, and investigate ideas from different perspectives (Alexander, 2018: 33-34; Reznitskaya, 2012: 447-448). These skills support common critical inquiry of complex questions and dilemmas and are thus important for ESD 2. In the field of dialogic research there are different ways of conceptualizing dialogue. Alexander identifies six principles which characterize dialogic conversations, they are: Collective, supportive, reciprocal, deliberative, cumulative and purposeful (Alexander, 2020: 131), and Mercer and colleagues differentiate between Disputational, Cumulative, and Exploratory Talk (Mercer, 2002: 173). In the paper we discuss the different conceptualizations and their relevance for our research question.

Empirically, the paper is based on 32 video club conversations between students from Danish Mercantile upper secondary schools, conducted as part of the research project ”Global Goals as Subject Goals” (Christensen, Teglbjærg & Qvortrup, 2022). There are different approaches to video clubs, but a common characteristic is the suggestion that analyses of video conversations give access to and insight into aspects of student-student, student-teacher or classroom interactions that are difficult to discern in the daily teaching practice (Seago, 2004, p. 276, Santagata, Zannoni, & Stigler, 2007; Star & Strickland, 2007; van Es & Sherin, 2008). The Video Club conversations were recorded with the "Gallery view" setting on ZOOM or TEAMS. Inspired by the tradition of ‘Philosophy with Children’, we gave the students a series of different questions and stimuli, which had in common that they were open or authentic. Our analytical approach involves what Bryman (2016) and Schwartz-Shea and Dvora (2011) describe as an abductive strategy, where disturbances from various sources are used to suggest further exploration. At first, we code the videos in their entirety in an intended inductive and explorative manner. However, we are aware that our coding will inevitably be marked by our knowledge of and experience in the fields of research on education for sustainability and dialogical research (Hejl, forthcoming). We keep this in mind during the coding process, and it will also be reflected in our dialogue about the different coding categories, which we refine continuously on the basis of these reflections. Analytically, we will have two foci in our coding. We focus on whether the students have a one-sided or complex understanding of sustainability (cf. above). Furthermore, we focus on markers of dialogue and look for conversation moves which function as clarifying, challenging, elaborating, clarifying argumentation, creating connections between the utterances of the interlocutors, connecting questions or issues to facts, opening the conversation for multiple perspectives and expressing wonder or interest, as these characteristics are operationalizations of the central elements of dialogic and exploratory talk (Hejl, forthcoming). We use these markers to analyze and discuss the strengths and deficiencies of the students’ conversations. We also draw on Alexander and Mercer and colleagues’ conceptualizations described above to analyze what kinds of talk the students engage in, as a foundation for discussing ways of improving similar conversations in the future.

Preliminary analyses suggest that there is great variation in students’ understanding of sustainability, their critical stance and dialogical competences. Although the students in this study were equipped with an extensive conversation guide in which the questions were formulated in line with dialogic ideals, the majority of the groups struggled with engaging in a critical discussion of the questions. The paper presents the variation and, on the basis of this and with reference to the paper’s two theoretical frameworks, develops an analysis model that can be used to understand and investigate conversations about sustainability. The analysis framework will be related to Bildung theory with a special focus on non-affirmative Bildung as described by Dietrich Benner (2020), as this agrees with Rudsberg & Öhmans (2010) call for a focus on pluralistic meaning making (see above). The analytical findings point to a need for increased scaffolding or facilitation of the process of common inquiry of complex and many faceted questions, regardless of whether we are dealing with issues of sustainability or other complex societal issues. We conclude the paper by suggesting ways of enhancing the students’ dialogic skills. One way would be to focus on strengthening their ability to formulate and use arguments, using an instrument like The Argumentation Rating Tool (ART) developed by Reznitskaya and Wilkinson. The ART is developed to assess and support student argumentation by use of video recordings of classroom discussions (Reznitskaya & Wilkinson 2021), which renders it an ideal tool for video club analysis. Another approach could be to teach them explicit dialogic conversations skills by use of teaching materials like Thinking Together (Littleton et al., 2005) or Philosophical Inquiry (Worley, 2011).

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