This presentation is based on the ECF4CLIM project (A European Competence Framework for a Low Carbon Economy and Sustainability through Education), funded by the European Green Deal / Horizon 2020 Programme. ECF4CLIM aims at developing, testing and validating a European Competence Framework for transformational change through a multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary and participatory process. Applying participatory action research (PAR), practitioner research (Heikkinen, deJong & Vanderlinde 2016) and citizen science approaches (Senabre, Perelló, Becker, Bonhoure, Legris & Cigarini 2021), it seeks to empower the educational communities in Finland, Portugal, Romania and Spain to act against climate change and towards sustainable development. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of the crowdsourcing workshops where teachers, students, education experts and different stakeholders reflect what prevents and/or enables schools to implement sustainability education properly. 

The general aim of the ECF4CLIM project is to find out how education can foster sustainability in society, including the economy, production, working life and people's daily lives. To do this, education itself must change.  ECF4CLIM studies the frameworks, norms and practices facilitating and impeding changes towards sustainability in education. In short, we ask how teachers and educators, and European citizens in general, should be able to take action to change our way of life on a more sustainable basis. The answer to this question, which we seek together with teachers, students and experts through crowdsourcing, will form the basis for the European Competence Framework for Sustainability (ECF). However, sustainability competences are not just about competencies of individuals, but also collective competencies which are actualized in the everyday practices of schools, universities, companies and other communities.  

The research question of this study is: ‘What constrains and/or enables the implementation of sustainability education in schools?’ To answer to this question, we apply the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis 2022) which seeks to find the preceding factors, or social arrangements which prefigure our practices; in other words, make our social practices possible in the way they happen. These practice architectures consist of (1.) cultural-discursive. (2.) material-economic, and (3.) social-political arrangements which in turn prefigure how practices are constituted through (1.) discourses (‘sayings’), (2.) physical activities and actions (‘doings’), as well as (3.) power relations such as solidarity and loyalty (Kemmis 2022). These different dimensions are intertwined in our everyday practices. This understanding of social practices forms a natural continuum with the methodologies of participatory action research (Kemmis et al. 2015).  

Various crowdsourcing practices are applied to outline what tools educators and other stakeholders have for promoting sustainability competences, and what hinders and promotes using them. Several workshops, international online discussion platforms and workshops applying arts-based approaches (Adams & Owens 2021) are conducted for various groups of stakeholders, such as teachers, student, experts and also for social groups in a vulnerable position which do not usually have a voice in society. 

The methodologies in the ECF4CLIM project are rooted in the traditions of participatory action research (Kemmis et al. 2015), practitioner research (Heikkinen, deJong & Vanderlinde 2016), narrative research (Heikkinen 2002) and citizen science (Senabre, Perelló, Becker, Bonhoure, Legris & Cigarini 2021). To enable different educational stakeholders to have their voice heard, various kinds of crowdsourcing practices are carried out, both online and face-to-face. The workshops are organized in four of the partner countries (Finland, Portugal, Romania and Spain). This presentation reports on the results based on narrative methodologies that produce stories about appropriate and inappropriate practices for sustainability education in schools. The data used in this presentation is achieved through workshops where The Method of Empathy-Based Stories (MEBS) is applied (Wallin, Koro-Ljungberg & Eskola 2019). The participants are asked to imagine, based on their real-life experiences, one fictional story about a day at a ‘nightmare school’ where sustainability education was implemented in the worst possible way. After that, they are asked to imagine one day at a ‘dream school’ where sustainable education was realized in the best possible way. What do teachers and students, the principal, other school staff and parents do? Why do they act the way they do? How does the school owner disable or enable sustainability education? How does the surrounding society constrain or enable the work for sustainability in schools? What makes all these parties work together – or not? In the workshops, the core elements of the stories are encapsulated in ‘sticky notes’ on an online platform. Both 'narrative analysis' and 'analysis of narratives' are produced from the material (Heikkinen 2002; Polkinghorne 1998). ‘Narrative analysis’ seeks to produce a single, coherent and progressive narrative with a clear plot by synthesizing different forms of data. Applying narrative analysis, the international research team compile the stories into one narrative of a nightmare school and another narrative of a dream school. The new stories resulting from this analysis are verified using member checking, through which all participants can comment on the finished report, by accepting, correcting, clarifying, or disagreeing with the interpretation. The ‘analysis of narratives’, in turn, seeks to look analytically for factors that prefigure the practices. This analysis is based on the theory of practice architectures which seeks to find pre-existing practice arrangements that prefigured practices.

The results of the two analyses are presented to the academic audience for the first time in this presentation at the ECER conference; the results at the time of writing this abstract are not yet available. The results are also reflected in the light of the draft for sustainability competences (Bianchi, Pisiotis & Cabrera 2022) which will be form the basis for the European Competence Framework for Sustainability which becomes, in turn, an element of the overall European Competence Framework (ECF). The findings are analyzed also from the perspectives of the individual and collective sustainability competences. The results of different crowdsourcing methodologies will be juxtaposed and collated, in order to enable both triangulation and comparison of data. Moreover, the results will be compared with the other studies of sustainability competences (e.g., Bianchi 2020; Wiek et al. 2011; 2016; Redman, Wiek & Barth 2021). The best practices will be available to widely promote sustainability competences needed for a sustainable post-carbon Europe.

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