This presentation draws on insights from a current Danish project on sustainability perspectives on mercantile vocational education. In a Danish context, the mercantile vocational institutions play a pivotal role in educating current and future workforces of those industries faced with the task of transitioning the Danish economy into a low-carbon and environmentally viable future (KEFM 2020; 2023). A recent report (DEA 2024) shows that the industries with the highest direct and indirect emissions (including agriculture, building, waste, energy, transportation and trade) comprise a significant share of both employees and managers with mercantile educational backgrounds. These industries call for more mercantile candidates with qualifications related to (green) economy, sustainable purchasing and sustainable trade and advisory (UVM 2023: 6). Still, mercantile programs remain an overlooked study object for research on sustainability education (Ebsen et al. 2024).

Considering the impact that educational training of managers and employees can have on the way firms shape sustainability strategies and the environmental footprints they have (Amore et al. 2019; Horbach & Jacob 2018) it is important to both policymakers, industries and educators in the vocational institutions, that research starts to address efforts of sustainability education in the mercantile programs. This project aims to provide empirical knowledge of how, when and to what extend vocational education can foster knowledge and competences conducive to sustainable transition of the industry they cater to.

Through an explorative and participatory research design, the project a) provides empirical knowledge on narratives and practices of sustainability education in mercantile programs, b) develops and qualifies theoretical understandings of sustainability education in the context of vocational education, and c) assesses the potentials and limitations of current educational practice and pedagogical organization to equip future generations of students with knowledge and competences needed to push for a green transition of the mercantile industry.

To understand how ‘sustainability education’ is constituted in mercantile education, the project deploys a theoretical framework that draws on key insights from the political ecology of education. The project presupposes that ‘sustainable education’ denotes a “floating signifier” (Levi-Strauss, 1987), i.e. an open phenomenon void of any fixed signified and thus open to political, social and cultural negotiation over its meaning. Political ecology of education (Meek & Lloro-Bidart 2017) examines the multipronged processes, whereby specific notions and practices of education emerge and assume authority over other forms of knowledge. This happens through messy intersections between educational discourses, narratives, materialities and practices on nature and environment. Politics is here understood as inherent in the everyday narratives, ideas and practices of sustainable education (Stott & Sullivan 2000). The framework allows for an explorative and empirically sensitized examination of how agents (broadly understood) produce, privilege, legitimize and (de/)stabilize educational knowledge inside and outside of the classroom (Czarniawska 2012; Røvik 2016), and in conversation with discourses and logics from a wide array of educational agents including the industry, the political level, school management and student narratives.

The project draws on qualitative explorative field work at mercantile programs at three selected vocational educational schools. The schools are selected based on the logic of maximum variation (Flyvbjerg, 2005: 230) in relation to geographical location, socio-economic composition of student-bodies and school efforts to integrate issues of green transition and sustainability into curricular frameworks. Research will be conducted between sites to ensure greater diversity of participants and potentials for comparisons of between-school similarities and differences. The comparative element is conducive of an iterative approach where field methods and analysis are procedurally adjusted to form a dynamic methodological framework and allowing for a high level of intersubjective validation (Wang & Hannafin, 2005: 16). The methods will involve participant observation in and around the classroom including open and semi-structured interviews with students and teachers, all of which are key instruments to elicit thick empirical information about human imaginaries and practices (Geertz, 1973). Through a holistic conception of educational practice, the project focuses both on curriculum-driven discussions in the classroom (particularly on topics like social and environmental responsibility in commerce, climate-responsible value chains, sustainable value creation in global trade and sustainable communication and reporting) as well as negotiations of students outside the classrooms. Combined, this provides insight on how pedagogical agents at school level imagine and communicate issues of green transitions, as well as how the political space of sustainability educational is negotiated, legitimized and practiced.

This project contributes with novel empirical and conceptual insights into an often-overlooked arena for sustainability education, by focusing on mercantile vocational education. It explores the practical and research-related tensions around the use of education as both a means to an end and an end in and of itself. On the one hand efforts to use education as tool to ensure specific behavior (Vare & Scott, 2007), and on the other hand approaches that draw on e.g. Scandinavian notions of critical thinking and democratic participation which underline the importance of developing competence that ensures the individual possibilities for engaging critically with current and future sustainability challenges to act in any given circumstance (Mogensen & Schnack, 2010). The project shows the importance of having the best possible knowledge on current climate issues but also relating to the specific context that surrounds the vocational content and act in accordance with the material and cultural world that surrounds them (Carlsson, 2020). Emphasizing the educational context highlights how environmental and sustainability education practice varies across different arenas of education and that specific knowledge is absolutely central in order to develop into existing disciplinary traditions and add new perspectives and competences while engaging with the already present challenges (Carlsson & Lysgaard 2024; Vare & Scott 2007). Additionally, the project demonstrates that by relating current political issues of student recruitment and drop-out rates to student pleas for increased and improved training on how to implement green transition post-graduation (EVA 2023), improving sustainability education can be seen as a way to not only ensure compliance with (inter)national education policy, but also a to rejuvenate educational practices and encourage more student-centric learning environments, that can attract and sustain future generations of students to the mercantile vocational programs.

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