Education is widely perceived as having great potential for the transformation towards sustainability (eg. Unesco 2014). It is , however, also seen to be complicit in reproducing historic and systemic violence and our unsustainable status quo (Stein et al 2022). Education needs to be fundamentally rethought and reimagined. Contemporary dominant approaches to educational development that are based on standardisation and curricula have been challenged (Holfelder 2019, Osberg and Biesta 2020). Transformative and transgressive learning have been proposed as generative for higher education (Lotz-Sisitka et al 2015, Ojala 2016). 

We, the authors of this paper, have recently been employed to lead educational development and research for sustainability at a technical university. The university is known for their engineering programmes but it also provides education in other fields including science (e.g. physics), architecture, and education. Our activities as educational developers include teaching in different courses on higher education pedagogy, facilitation of workshops, coordination of collegial networks, supporting course and programme development collaborating with teachers, programme directors and university leadership. We also coordinate a new research group on sustainability and education, in which we explore educational development and research for sustainability in a bigger group. 

With the aim to inform and inspire other educational developers and researchers and invite a dialogue on how to promote and support transformation for sustainability at universities, we are in this paper exploring and shaping our new roles as educational developers and researchers, learning and becoming in affective relationship with each other, sharing and learning from the pains and pleasures of working with sustainability education at a technical university.

The pleasures and pain comes from working within an influential social context. Technology, the way it is applied today, is seen to be driving social and environmental exploitation (e.g. Barca 2020). At the same time, science and technology is being highly valued in society today and young people are being attracted to education in those fields, e.g. in recruitment programmes reaching out to students from under-represented groups (e.g. women). Decades of research suggest engineering and technology is socially produced in ways associated with masculinity (Ottemo et al. 2020). Engineering is positioned as technical and mathematical, objective, rational, and reductionist, which implies that aspects central to sustainability are neglected or have low status. The pain comes from working within disciplinary structures in which the ill-defined and complex concept of sustainability can be rejected as “fuzzy”. Both of us have a background in engineering, which may help in understanding teachers and students' situations. However, as has been described by Machado de Oliveira (2021), our expertise within social science such as our knowledge in education can be met with arrogance, silencing us and limiting our possibilities of working for change. 

In this paper we explore our roles and work as educational developers and researchers supporting and promoting change of university education for sustainability in collaboration with various actors at university. We engage with the following research questions:

1. What emerges in shared learning and affective relationships, among us educational developers and researchers and those we engage with for transformative change in education? 

2. What strategies for the work as educational developers for transformative change can be drawn from that which emerges (see 1.)?

3. How can our research approach be used and further evolved for educational development?

The approach we are using in this study is inspired by bricolage (Rogers 2012), as well as diffraction and reflection (Bozalek and Zembylas 2017, Serra Undurraga 2021). Bricolage allows to engage with research as an emergent and creative process, drawing on a plurality of methodologies, and theoretical perspectives. Bricolage was developed as an alternative to dominant research aiming for universal, abstract or objective knowledge. Diffraction has been proposed as a complement to reflection, to recognise entanglements and relationships through which subjects and objects are continuously interacting and in the making. Further, diffraction provides a theoretical basis for learning from difference, bringing together our different experiences and positions. Bricolage and diffraction together enables engagement with affective relationship and differences as a source of learning and insight rather than as a threat to be eliminated in research and education. We use the similarities in our current positions, mandates, activities, and shared devotion to work for sustainability transformations in and through education, and our differences in backgrounds and ideas as research subjects and objects. We set up a safe and open space for us to learn with and through each other. In three hours of weekly meetings starting in the beginning of February 2023, we share, reflect and diffract on our experiences, observations, and ideas. Those meetings will include sharing how the previous week’s conversations have shaped our thinking and feelings and artefacts we found useful or inspiring during the weeks (images, papers, etc.). We capture our reflections and diffractions on a large paper roll, which will be the main source of data that will be analysed in this study. We also use a digital slack-channel to communicate and each of us takes notes individually between the meetings. The data analysis will be specified as the learning unfolds but we start with identifying themes and creating a web of meaning. To start with, we focus on learning among the two of us. This will make it easier for us to explore our roles in a trustful relationship and build on a shared concern for the state of the world and the need for transformation of education and society. At a later stage we consider inviting further persons into this learning process.

We have already started a joint learning process, though less structured, and in this process we have seen that we have joint and also different views on how to promote change, which are provoking and fruitful for this work. We have identified tensions and synergies that we will explore further. One such tension lies in different focuses on sustainability and equality. Previous work suggests that issues of climate justice, racial justice and gender equality have until recently too rarely been considered together, at times even been seen as competing (Stoddard et al 2021). Also at our university, these are two separate areas of work. There are attempts to integrate efforts and there are also forces to separate initiatives and learning for change. Another tension we are exploring together is between instrumental vs emancipatory or emergentist approaches to change (Barrineau, Mendy, Peters 2022). We are asking whether or not, and if so how, instrumental approaches in education can be combined with emergentist approaches to changes. We have felt frustration in how educational development is being approached from university leadership and have been struggling to navigate more strategic and relational engagement as opposed to more confronting approaches to change. We have also been asking about the role of activism at universities. One question is what place emotional and affective ties have in academia, education, among professionals, i.e. educators, and those engaged with educational development. We learn to recognise and work through tensions and hierarchies, and develop strategies to do so together. This might contribute to bringing peace in culture wars, mitigate polarisation and promote transformations at our university and beyond. Developing the research method to conceptually guide and support this process further, we hope to inspire future learning and collaboration for transformation in and through education among other teachers and researchers.

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