Contemporary social, economic and ecological challenges represent persistent problems in our society. The call for education to engage with these challenges, further referred to as ‘sustainability challenges’, is increasing (Duraiappah et al., 2021; Kuijer-Siebelink, 2022). Especially the higher, professional and vocational forms of education are searching for new pedagogies and for new structures to address these challenges, because common disciplinary and institutional ways of learning appear to fall short (Lotz-Sisitka et al., 2015; O’Brien et al., 2013). Increasingly, parts of the educational curriculum take place in transdisciplinary partnerships between education and society, so-called collaborative learning arrangements (Coenders, 2020; Zitter, 2021). This tendency in practice is accompanied by a growing body of literature that provides directions of how to make the collaborative arrangements for sustainability work (Tassone et al., 2018; Wals, 2007).

The collaborative learning design is ideally based on principles for responsible education (Tassone et al., 2018): education for society which means fully engaging with the interconnectedness and complexity of sustainability issues and staying with the complexity through an open ended learning process rather than an orientation on solving the issues; education with society which refers to reciprocal and empathic interaction about issues between educational actors and other actors in society whose matters of concern are at stake. The third one, whole person education, refers to embodied, critical and creative forms of learning by integrating cognitive knowing, being and doing.  

The collaborative arrangements address the larger whole, the context, the relationships and interactions, and the many dimensions of system levels that emerge in the process. Their aim is to be critical, to identify structural causes of issues and to develop systemic rather than partial interventions (Montuori, 2013)

Such learning arrangements are typically guided by collaborative pedagogies. These pedagogies are associated with social learning as ‘learning that takes place when divergent interests, norms, values and constructions of reality meet in an environment that is conductive to learning’ (Wals, 2007, p. 18) and with transdisciplinary learning as learning that ‘takes into account all relevant disciplinary and societal perspectives of a challenge which may be different each time’ (Visscher-Voerman & Visscher, 2022, p. 2). Three key elements of the collaborative pedagogies are generally mentioned in literature and practice. The pedagogies are relational, as a reciprocal relation to other experiences, frames of references and knowledge, reflexive, as critical thinking regarding the (taken for granted) worldviews behind problem statements and solutions, and creative, as an ongoing process of experimenting with problem frames and scenario’s with regard to sustainable futures (Lenglet, 2022; Lindley, 2015). When the collaborative pedagogies lead to deep learning that affects the values and assumptions of the learners, they sometimes are identified as being transformative (Wals & Peters, 2017). Transformative forms of learning that affect a learners’ inner-self or ‘being’, appear to be necessary for dealing with sustainability challenges (Lotz-Sisitka et al., 2015; Woiwode et al., 2021).

While we theoretically know that collaborative learning works to contribute to sustainable futures and while the educational arrangements that address societal issues tend to be based on these principles, little is known about how these principles actually work in vocational education practices wherein these principles are espoused. There still seem to be differences between education’s stated desires for a more sustainable future and everyday’ s actions (McGrath et al., 2019; Wals et al., 2017). With this study we want to explore how the espoused collaborative sustainability oriented education manifests itself in practice. The aim of the study is to understand the next steps for education society partnerships to unfold a sustainable future. 

The study is conducted with a participatory design (Robertson & Simonsen, 2012) of two collaborative learning arrangements, located at the interface of vocational education and society in the Netherlands. We participated at different moments in the course of nine month in the learning arrangements. First to explore the learning ecologies: who are the participants, when and how do they interact, what is their purpose, who learns, how they actually work on societal issues, with whom and what makes sense to them all? Techniques used were participant observations and open interviews with the lab participants supported with visual artefacts like representations of the learning ecology and a timeline along with the participants reconstructed their work on specific sustainability challenges. In our analysis we used an interpretative methodology (Carver, 2020) which pays much attention to the lived experiences of stakeholders: educators, students, professional partners and - indirectly –societal actors, whose matter of concern is at stake in the two cases investigated. The data of the explorative first part was initially analysed with descriptive codes (Miles & Huberman, 1994) that reflected the topics (i.e. ‘who are the participants?) we just referred to. Within the topics we explored the alignment and the tensions between enacted and espoused collaborative learning arrangements. Because tensions were manifest, we used versus codes (Altrichter & Gstettner, 1993) to point them. The tensions in the first part made us decide to use a critical approach (Bergman et al., 2012) to evoke some change in the second part. We created a creative and experiential field to fully engage the participants in the tensions we found. And to enhance reflexivity on the tensions. This second part was analysed with emotion coding (Prus, 1996) in order to address the intrapersonal participant experiences and to show ways forward.

The study found that deep seated educational routines like alienation from issues, students as learners, society as object, a bias for cognitive ways of knowing, ‘solving’ problems and short term thinking seems to limit the emergence of more genuine collaboration. The study revealed that the educational routines may be manifestations of dominant socio cultural routines that underly the sustainability issues education tries to address. Adding ‘collaborative’ or ‘transformative’ to education, seems not enough to evoke more sustainable futures. The same applies to using terms like ‘co-production’ of knowledge. The use of these, sometimes rosy concepts, may even hinder progression because they don’t show the ‘deeply personal’ and ‘inherently systematic’ changes which seem to be essential to create alternative futures through partnerships (Senge et al., 2004; Woiwode, et al., 2021). Instead the concepts make us think we are ‘there’. The study invites educators – and all actors in the education society partnerships like researchers and professional partners - to enter a new space together which radically changes the position of education towards society: education as society. Education as society holds space for subjectification (Biesta, 2020) as meeting each other as fellow humans and co-habitants of this world, together exploring our role in the world and associated rethinking of the dichotomy between education and society which we are used to problematize in literature and practices around transdisciplinary partnerships (Galan-Muros & Davey, 2019; McNall et al., 2009). The idea of education as society attempts to shift our attention from educational innovation to social innovation (Moulaert, 2013) and - thus - asks for paradigm change (Sterling, 2004) in our pursuit of sustainable development.

Duraiappah, A., Van Atteveldt, N., Asah, S., Borst, G., Bugden, S., Buil, J. M., Ergas, O., Fraser, S., Mercier, J., & Restrepo Mesa, J. F. (2021). The international science and evidence-based education assessment. npj Science of Learning, 6(1), 7. Galan-Muros, V., & Davey, T. (2019). The UBC ecosystem: putting together a comprehensive framework for university-business cooperation. The Journal of Technology Transfer, 44, 1311-1346. Kuijer-Siebelink, W. (2022). Leren voor verandering in werk en samenleving. HAN University of Applied Science. https://www.han.nl/artikelen/2022/09/goodiebag-lectoraat-responsief-beroepsonderwijs/Wietske_Kuijer_Samenspel_web.pdf Lenglet, F. (2022). Transformative and Social Learning–In the Tradition of Freire. In Transformative Research and Higher Education. Emerald Publishing Limited. Lindley, D. (2015). Elements of social learning supporting transformative change. Southern African Journal of Environmental Education, 31, 50-64. Lotz-Sisitka, H., Wals, A. E., Kronlid, D., & McGarry, D. (2015). Transformative, transgressive social learning: Rethinking higher education pedagogy in times of systemic global dysfunction. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 16, 73-80. McGrath, S., Mulder, M., Papier, J., & Suart, R. (2019). Handbook of vocational education and training: Developments in the changing world of work. Springer. Moulaert, F. (2013). The international handbook on social innovation: collective action, social learning and transdisciplinary research. Edward Elgar Publishing. O’Brien, K., Reams, J., Caspari, A., Dugmore, A., Faghihimani, M., Fazey, I., Hackmann, H., Manuel-Navarrete, D., Marks, J., & Miller, R. (2013). You say you want a revolution? Transforming education and capacity building in response to global change. Environmental Science & Policy, 28, 48-59. Tassone, V. C., O’Mahony, C., McKenna, E., Eppink, H. J., & Wals, A. E. (2018). (Re-) designing higher education curricula in times of systemic dysfunction: a responsible research and innovation perspective. Higher Education, 76(2), 337-352. Visscher-Voerman, I., & Visscher, I. K. (2022). Essay Theme 1 Higher Education for Societal Issues. NRO. https://www.nro.nl/sites/nro/files/media-files/essay_40.5.22945.214_visscher-voerman_visscher_def.pdf Wals, A. E. (2007). Social learning towards a sustainable world: Principles, perspectives, and praxis. Wageningen Academic Publishers. Wals, A. E., Mochizuki, Y., & Leicht, A. (2017). Critical case-studies of non-formal and community learning for sustainable development. In (Vol. 63, pp. 783-792): Springer. Woiwode, C., Schäpke, N., Bina, O., Veciana, S., Kunze, I., Parodi, O., Schweizer-Ries, P., & Wamsler, C. (2021). Inner transformation to sustainability as a deep leverage point: fostering new avenues for change through dialogue and reflection. Sustainability Science, 16(3), 841-858. Zitter, I. (2021). Leeromgevingen in het beroepsonderwijs als knooppunten in onze maatschappij (9089281452). Hogeschool Utrecht. file:///C:/Users/wzn/Downloads/file_4817c28b-6d56-42f2-83f1-69ea87310c2e_HU_openbare_les_Ilya_Zitter%20(1).pdf