Hope has moved to the center of the discussion about sustainable education (Ratinen & Uusiautti, 2020; Straume, 2020). The importance of emotions and knowledge in ESD has been discussed for some years (Manni et al., 2017). While there are approaches that juxtapose emotions to scientific knowledge (Tsevreni, 2011), in this paper we investigate the role and interplay of emotions and knowledge in relation to decision making in green transition issues. The three dimensions, emotion, cognition and enactment, are also important for measuring sustainable consciousness (Gericke et al., 2019). Our research question is: Which role plays different degrees of pathos when presenting green transition dilemma for students’ emotional reaction relative to their dilemma specific knowledge base and decision-making? The paper presents results from an experimental vignettes survey (Atzmüller & Steiner, 2010), where 1380 Danish students in grade 6 to 9 have been exposed to and questioned about four dilemmatic narratives of green transition based on texts and pictures. The dilemmas are inspired from qualitative empirical data and fictionalized, and take up issues of diversity, waste/recycling, and climate crisis from different disciplines. The students were assigned randomly to three different versions (splits) of the same dilemma varying the pathos of the narratives. Emotional reactions are measured by a two-dimensional scale (pleasant-unpleasant; activation-deactivation) inspired by Russel’s affectiv circumplex (Yik et al., 2011). Inspired by Waltner and colleagues (Waltner et al., 2019) we developed a knowledge scale to each dilemma consisting of five multiple choice questions. Finally, the students were forced to make a decision on the dilemma at hand. Beside personal variables, we collected self-reported background variable like socio-economic background, knowledge about Fridays for Future and a validated Nature Connectedness Index (Richardson et al., 2019). Preliminary results seem to confirm the adolescence dip in nature connectedness and engagement. We expect substantial variation in students’ emotional reactions in relation to knowledge level and decision-making related to the dilemma. In addition, methodological issues related to the design of dilemmas and the applied scales will be discussed.

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