In this scholarly review we critically discuss the last 30 years of research on pluralism in environmental and sustainability education (ESE). Pluralism has been a focal point for a vast amount of theoretical and empirical studies in the research field. In this review we analyse the state-of-the-art of pluralism in relation to current societal changes and challenges. By placing three decades of research on pluralism in relation to key challenges that face democratic society and education, we outline prospects for future research and discuss what role pluralism can, and should, take in ESE research.

             While pluralism has been addressed in ESE research for thirty years, we have witnessed three major changes that challenge pluralism as an educational approach. First, we have seen fierce polarization of public debate and the rise of post-truth politics that fuels political disagreements over descriptive questions, such as “is the climate changing due to human activity?” (cf. Aasen, 2017; McCright & Dunlap, 2011). Second, there has been an increased instrumentalization of education that has brought forth a culture of accountability and a focus on educational achievement in terms of measurable outcomes that can be compared and competing on an international scale (Rizvi & Lingard, 2009; Lawn, 2011).  Third, the environmental situation and the ongoing climate change on this planet has come with an accentuated urgency for action, to put it mildly. The current societal, educational, and environmental situation puts pressure on pluralism as an educational approach to such an extent that one could wonder whether now is the right time for an educational approach that frames teaching and learning as an open-ended endeavour of growth and freedom. The aim of this paper is therefore to critically reflect on the development of pluralism in ESE research.

             Pluralistic ideals in ESE took shape out of the normativity-debate in the 1990’s (Jickling, 1994; Lijmbach et al., 2002) and how they developed through theoretical discussions of relativism (Öhman, 2006; Öhman & Östman, 2007; Van Poeck, 2019). Rather than being an external critique against pluralism, the problem of relativism is theoretically used to further develop and improve pluralism as an educational approach in ESE. During the last decade, new theoretical perspectives have become a part of the theoretical development of pluralism in ESE. These are post-humanism/more-than-human perspectives (Kopnina & Cherniak, 2016; Lindgren & Öhman, 2019), decolonial perspectives (Sund & Pashby, 2020), and political theory such as deliberation and agonism (Lundegård & Wickman, 2012; Tryggvason & Öhman, 2019). The perspectives are new in the sense that they are new to the development and discussion of the pluralistic approach in ESE, even if the theories have a longer history within other fields of social science. The critique that is formulated from these theoretical strands is immanent in the sense that it is not a critique of the pluralistic approach per se, but a critique of the presuppositions, the epistemologies, and the implicit values that follow from pluralistic approach as it is formulated in ESE research.

             For our review, we have scrutinized three decades of research literature, and critically engaged with these writings in the light of present societal challenges and what these may imply in terms of requirements for future research. The following questions guided our scholarly review: “How has pluralism developed theoretically during the last 30 years?”, “What empirical findings about pluralism have been important during the last 30 years?”, and “Does pluralistic ESE need to be revisited in the light of current societal, educational, and ecological evolutions?”.

The method in this review can be labelled as a collective scholarly reflection on literature about pluralism in ESE. It differs from a systematic review of literature in the sense that we, rather than systematically mapping, describing, and analysing the existing literature, critically review and reflect on previous work on the topic guided by the specific concern how the societal challenges outlined above may require us to thoroughly revise (research on) pluralistic ESE. Instead of starting in a broad database search, we started by searching one of the main journals in the field: Environmental Education Research (EER). With 28 volumes, it provided a solid gravitational point for finding the key discussions and findings on pluralism from the last 30 years. We searched the EER web page for “pluralis*” to include both pluralistic and pluralism, (and to exclude post that mentions “plural” or “plurality”). This search resulted in 173 hits (June 17th 2022). The web page of EER is not ideal for systematic searches as it contains a very limited advanced search option. However, as our initial focus was on the 28 volumes of EER we found that the web page was the most suitable alternative. For instance, a search on the database EBSCO of pluralis* [anywhere] and “environmental education research” [journal title] resulted in just 20 posts. The 173 items included peer-reviewed articles, book reviews and editorial. Scanning through the posts we excluded 15 items that were not peer-reviewed articles. This left us with 158 publications to screen. We lacked access to two of them. The screening process consisted of three steps. The first step was to read title, abstract, and keywords and search the text for “pluralis*”. In this first step we excluded 54 articles that mention pluralism or pluralistic somewhere in the text but do not touch upon the issue of pluralism in ESE. Secondly, we read the sections of the article on “pluralism” or “pluralistic” and decided whether the article was relevant for describing the state-of-the-art of pluralism in ESE. In this step we excluded 24 articles. In the third step we read the full article to assess whether its focus was on developing pluralism theoretically or investigating it empirically. In this step we excluded 13 articles. This screening process left us with 65 articles that we see as important articles in EER to describe, and critically reflect on pluralism in ESE.

Our review resulted in findings about theoretical developments as well as about empirical research on pluralism in practice which we discuss in relation to current societal challenges. We show how, theoretically, the idea of pluralistic ESE emerged from the critique of normativity in EE/ESD and how the overall theoretical focus shifted from normativity to multiple strands of immanent critique. However, the latter to some extend re-actualizes questions of normativity. One path forward for theoretical ESE research is therefore to renew perspectives on normativity in pluralistic teaching approaches. Furthermore, we identify a need for research on the relation between environmental urgency and pluralistic teaching. Even though temporal aspects are discussed (Block et al., 2018; Mélard & Stassart, 2018; Wildemeersch, 2018) the relation between temporality, pluralism, and teaching could be further developed. For instance, is it reasonable to compare the (alleged) time-consumption of the pluralistic approach (cf. Öhman & Östman, 2019) with the time-consumption of normative teaching approaches when they clearly have different aims and goals? Reading and discussing 30 years of research on pluralism, it is clear that many theoretical problems are not identified as practical problems in empirical studies. An overall conclusion based on our review of the empirical articles is that pluralistic classroom discussions seem to hold educational and democratic potentials but there is a lack of studies from a broad range of educational settings. In relation to the political polarization of public debate, this lack becomes important to overcome. For instance, even if we are seeing a political polarization of public debate in Europe, we also see European countries where the polarization is perhaps not the main problem, but instead the lack of conflicting perspectives in public debate. It would be highly valuable for ESE research to gain insight in classroom discussions conducted in such contexts.  

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