Our idea with this symposium is to “stay with questions”, rather than moving too fast to answers and solutions to the current global environmental crisis (and the overall need for radical change of dominating human eco-social-cultural being-in-the-world). We want to start conversations around these “meta”-question/s: what do we see as the most important and most difficult questions of ESE? To avoid disappearing into all too abstract and universalizing thinking, that has dominated western thinking and colonial practices all too long, we envision and invite “a Geography of ESE questioning”. By this we mean: all the presentations in this double symposium will link their questioning to specific projects and geographical positions, situating the emergence of the questions in local practices. During the symposium we will then make a geographical mapping of the questions and begin conversations along lines in between the local contexts. Thus, each presentation will start in a specific local context and ESE research project and end with (what from this context seems to be) the most current, important and/or difficult questions to answer. We will then invite dialogue and conversations that elaborate on the questions across the different contexts, making a collective mapping of relations between the questions, thereby potentially growing, changing, possibly even clarifying them while at the same expanding the range of imaginable answers. Simultaneously we will employ a dialogical drawing strategy that invites all participants into the collective effort of creating a ‘ECER Belgrade conference 2025 specific mapping’ of a “geography of what we see as the most difficult and important ESE questions”. The aim then is to publish this collective map afterwards as an offering to the ESE research community. 

Lehtonen, A., Salonen, A., Cantell, H., & Riuttanen, L. (2018). A pedagogy of interconnectedness for encountering climate change as a wicked sustainability problem. Journal of Cleaner Production, 199, 860-867. Blenkinsop, S., & Kuchta, E. C. (2024). Ecologizing education: Nature-centered teaching for cultural change. Cornell University Press. Paulsen, M., jagodzinski, J., & Hawke, S. (red.) (2022). Pedagogy in the Anthropocene: Re-Wilding Education for a New Earth. Palgrave Macmillan. Varpanen, J., Kallio, J., Saari, A., Helkala, S., & Holmberg, L. (2024). Attunements of care: The art of existence in the Anthropocene. Research in Arts and Education, 2024(2), 52–63. Rousell, D., & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, A. (2022). Posthuman research playspaces: Climate child imaginaries. Routledge. Jukes, S., Fox, R., Hills, D., White, P. J., Ferguson, J. P., Kamath, A., Logan, M., Riley, K., Rousell, D., Wooltorton, S., & Whitehouse, H. (2024). Eco-anxiety and a desire for hope: A composite article on the impacts of climate change in environmental education. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 40(5), 811–830. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2024.65 Marks, E., Hickman, C., Panu, P., Clayton, S., Lewandowski, E., Mayall, E., . . . Susteren, L. v. (2021). Young people’s voices on climate anxiety, government betrayal and moral injury: A global phenomenon. . Preprint available at doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3918955. UNESCO (2021). Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education. Report from the International Commission on the Futures of Education. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000379707.locale=en