The word care or its semantic variations is omnipresent in everyday speech about climate change and societal issues that e.g. ‘matter’ and need to be ‘taken care of’. There is an increasing amount of academic literature debating care in relation to education and sustainability with a variety of theoretical frameworks. To date, however, there is no comprehensive examination of how care surfaces in the current ESE literature, which is aimed to be explored in this paper in form of a literature review.

Identifying various conceptualizations and manifestations is vital to go beyond an everyday understanding of ’care’. More specifically this paper explores literature on care in the research field of ESE and employs an additional focus on implications for higher education; an educational context in which care is not often attended to (Anderson et al. 2020). This review of literature elaborates on (1) the conceptualization of care and (2) the theoretical frameworks that are appealed to in ESE literature with a focus on the educational practice of teaching and learning (Didaktik) in higher education. Thus, besides providing an overview of the different conceptualizations of care in ESE research, the analysis results in an identification of motivations for care and its practical implications, including conditions for care and a reflection on its implied or observable consequences and manifestations. Furthermore, the paper does also contribute with an overview of how care is framed in ESE research by contrasting the theoretical frameworks that are commonly drawn upon.

Exploring the literature reveals that mainly two bodies of research are dealing, in one way or another, with care. The first one concerns research and writings about emotions towards climate change and sustainability-related issues coming from a place of care for the world. During the last decade we have seen numerous publications with a range of psychological interpretations and discussions of its consequences (see e.g. Verlie 2019, Ojala et al. 2021, Todd 2020, Wray 2022). Some scholars discuss how provoking specific feelings might result in higher awareness and more sustainable lifestyle choices (e.g. Kals & Maes 2002, Rakib et al. 2022). In contrast, other scholars argue that those - as ‘negative’ interpreted - feelings such as of worry and unease, prohibit the individual from getting engaged and leaving them in despair and depression (Wray 2022). Which is where the second body of literature intersects, concerning the ethical dimension of ESE that are brought about through care or result in discussions on care as a moral responsibility. Dealing with the ethical dimension of sustainability is a long-standing research interest and has been the topic of a symposium on ethics of the Environmental and Sustainability Research Network (ESER) and associated mini-collection of the contributions (Öhman 2016). 

The literature data for review includes peer reviewed literature that has been published up until February 2023 and was selected in three steps. The review began with a reviewing of content (title, keywords, abstracts) to find relevant articles in a selection of eight ESE journals (JEE, Environ. Educ. Res., SAJEE, CJEE, AJEE, Appl. Environ. Educ., JESD, Int. J. Sustain. High. Educ.). The aim of this first step was to find relevant literature on care in ESE that presented a variety of conceptualizations and theoretical frameworks in the field of research. This step was followed by a keyword search in the EBSCO database including ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), using the following search terms: “care in higher education” NOT “health care” NOT “medical care” NOT “foster care” AND “emotions”. The goal of this search was to widen the investigative lens and identify conceptions and theoretical frameworks in broader educational research literature on care outside of ESE, however, narrowed by the context of higher education and inclusion of emotional dimensions in education. After initial selection, based on title and keywords, the articles’ abstracts were reviewed with a broad view on (1) care in ESE and was complemented by literature on (2) care in higher education in order to include as many conceptualizations and signifiers as possible for the synthesis in the review process. This selection process resulted in 47 documents for qualitative content analysis and was followed by the third and final step for article selection: the reviewing of references and citations in Google scholar following the forward and backward snowballing technique (Wohlin 2014). The above-mentioned research foci of conceptualizations of care and its underlying theoretical frameworks for further analysis, were iteratively developed during the process of this scoping review (Gutierrez-Bucheli et al. 2022). The method for analysis was an inductive qualitative content analysis (Mayring 2015). The coding of data resulted in findings of repetitions, overlaps and tensions in conceptualizations of care and its underlying theoretical frameworks. These were further analyzed by contrasting its described (1) manifestations, (2) motives, (3) conditions, (4) consequences and (5) practices of care. The whole process was accompanied and followed by discussions in the research team about identified themes in the surfacing of care in ESE and higher education.

Our review allowed to map different ways care is conceptualized in ESE research and points to theoretical frameworks, found in higher education research literature outside of ESE that might be valuable to take into considerations for future research. The rough description below of four partly intersecting themes found in the literature, are to be seen as preliminary findings. The debate about evoking emotions and feelings towards sustainability and climate related issues is a major theme in the literature about the practice of caring. In this strand of literature, authors argue for creating safe teaching and learning environments, where the learning community and the creation of relationships are of high value. Another theme in ESE research is related to pedagogical motivations to evoke feelings. This strand discusses different teaching methods with care for or about the natural environment as a learning goal. Examples of teaching methods discussed in this literature strand are place-based education based on the belief that encouraging an emotional attachment to a place will lead people to care (Gruenewald, cited in Goralnik, 2012), experiential learning, artistic explorations or education situated outside of the classroom and immersed in nature (e.g. Trott 2020, Wals & Benavot 2017, Livingston & Gachago 2020), etc. Literature on care in higher education practices was considered to complement the discussion on conceptualizations of care not limited by a particular sustainability discourse. This resulted in two additional themes found in the literature. One theme discusses university students as mature adults and debates whether a caring practice would result in patronizing or infantilization, while the institution acknowledges its responsibility in enabling best conditions for academic success. Finally, the implementation of frameworks derived from care ethics (e.g. Noddings 1984, Tronto 1993) is discussed as a means to resist the neoliberal structures of the modern university.

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