Emotions play an important role in sustainability transitions (Martiskainen & Sovacool 2021) as well as in learning processes connected to sustainability issues (e.g. Gan & Gal 2022, Manni et al. 2017). Yet, there is a lack of empirical studies outlining exactly how emotions contribute to or can impede change processes and how they are implicated in learning toward such change. It is thus our ambition to pinpoint how emotions can be generative or restrictive for such learning in terms of enabling change to occur. The theoretical contribution of this paper is to identify which functions emotions fulfil in the learning process. We conceptualise the generative function of emotions with the help of pragmatist literature on education and learning, and specifically Dewey’s (1938, 1957) pragmatist theory. Emotions can, for example, act as disturbances which might start a learning process and motivate people to reflect on their current habits and find ways of resolving problems (Östman et al. 2019). We also stress how a desire for a different future can help drive the learning process forward (Garrison 1997) toward the emergence of alternative ways of being (Garrison et al. 2015). In this case, emotions play a crucial role in people enacting change. Emotions can, however, also have a restrictive function. Feminist literature (e.g. Ahmed 2014, Boler 1999) offers, for example, insights into how certain emotional customs or rules structure how people are able to feel and which emotions they are able to express in learning situations. Emotions and emotional rules can create barriers to finding creative solutions, limit which concerns can be taken up in the learning process, and orient people toward certain changes but not others. For the empirical contribution of this paper, we study several cases of energy transitions-in-the-making in Germany, namely transitions away from lignite coal mining and the development of energy communities. We draw on observations of collective learning situations and interviews on participants’ perceptions of, and emotions connected to, these learning situations. We use a transactional methodology for analysing learning (Östman & Öhman 2022) to create insights into which emotions are taken up in the learning process and how they influence the learning. With the help of pragmatist didactical theory and (pragmatist) feminist literature on emotions, we then establish in which ways emotions might have been generative or restrictive in the learning situations contributing to sustainability transitions.

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