The future is unknown. Not knowing can cause feelings of stress, discomfort or paralysis, yet it can also evoke feelings of hope, curiosity and wonder (Cocker 2013). Not knowing is a central predicament in sustainability education, because it acknowledges the ‘wicked’ nature of sustainability issues which are multifaceted, complex, have unpredictable impacts and are ‘characterised by a lack of knowledge, conflicting values and, therefore, imperfect solutions’ (Horvath et al 2025, p.1; Rittel & Webber 1973). Given this unknown future, it is inevitable that teaching and assessment in relation to sustainability issues is likely to entail a level of uncertainty (Gordon 2006). Such education may support the development of students’ interplay of knowledge, skills and dispositions, such as resilience, so they can live and flourish in uncertain situations (Pettig 2023; Tauritz 2016). 

Learning for Sustainability (LfS) aims to raise students’ awareness about sustainability issues, help them to become active citizens, support them to develop dispositions towards negotiating the feeling of not-knowing and encourage them to find creative solutions for a better future (Dahlbeck 2014). Through LfS, students can develop dispositions to manage the feeling of uncertainty and make informed decisions, leading to transformative learning (Dunlop & Rushton 2022).

Although there is research on the importance of developing students’ dispositions, there is limited research around how these can be assessed in the context of secondary education, especially around the dimension of negotiating an unknown future (Redman et al. 2021). This is potentially due to several challenges which impede the assessment of LfS in formal education including, but not limited to, rigid disciplinary fragmentation, a focus on assessing students’ factual knowledge about sustainability, rather than their critical and creative thinking, and the unknown ways in which students might enact their sustainability competences in the future.

To address this gap, our project explores whether assessment practices in art education might inform the assessment of dispositions favourable to negotiating feelings of not knowing among secondary education students in England. Art, by its nature, is a journey into the unknown; it allows self-discovery, expression, creativity, and an embodied experience. Not knowing is the driving force inherently embedded in art because both the process and its outcome cannot be predicted (Fortnum, 2013). Research suggests that art-based approaches can support students to address complex and unforeseen sustainability issues and develop sustainability competences (Eernstman & Wals 2013). This is because art-based approaches embed tacit forms of knowledge founded on embodied and sensory experiences which make sustainability issues ‘visible and tangible’ (Horvath et al 2025, p.3). Art-based approaches embrace uncertainty and ambiguity, requiring students to demonstrate risk-taking, experimentation, imagination and visualisation; skills and dispositions which can assist in dealing with unpredictable and complex sustainability issues.

The research questions of the project are:

1. What assessment practices are used currently in creative disciplines in secondary education?
2. To what extent, and if so how, is assessment of unforeseen outcomes being conducted by teachers of creative subjects?
3. How else can students’ skills and dispositions in negotiating the unknown be assessed?
4. To what extent might these assessment practices support the assessment of LfS across other disciplines?

A combination of Constructivist Grounded Theory (Charmaz 2014) and hermeneutic lifeworld phenomenology (Annells 2006; Burns et al 2022) has been selected as the theoretical framework of the project, aiming to generate a theory around the assessment of LfS, while exploring participants’ meaning within qualitative data. The project also draws on new materialism, by acknowledging the role of matter in LfS, art education and assessment practice, recognising the agency of the more than human world, and the often unpredictable interactions between human and non-human elements (Coole & Frost 2010). 

Although hermeneutic lifeworld phenomenology, Constructivist Grounded Theory and new materialism present several tensions primarily in relation to their ontological underpinnings, they present some synergies, particularly in relation to their openness to the unknown, and their focus on the elements of embodiment, context and relationality. These synergies have enhanced and supported the data collection and analysis. To collect data for the project, we interviewed art teachers working in secondary schools in England through two rounds of semi-structured interviews to explore the skills and dispositions required to negotiate feelings of not knowing, and whether and if so, how art teachers assess these. We also conducted semi-structured interviews with geography, science, English and maths teachers to explore whether and if so, how, they assess students’ skills and dispositions in negotiating the unknown. Data analysis involved an initial hermeneutic lifeworld phenomenological reading of the qualitative data to discover teachers’ meanings of assessment, followed by analysis through constructivist Grounded Theory using open coding and simultaneous data collection and analysis to explore the convergence between interpretations and experiences and how teachers construct these meanings (Charmaz and Thornberg, 2021). Throughout this analysis, we followed teachers’ most important material trajectories and the material-discursive practices that are at play to get to the questions that we were most interested in, primarily around the assessment of students’ ability to negotiate the feeling of not knowing. This process allowed us to be sensitised to the particular materials that constitute and affect the phenomenon of assessment of LfS.

While LfS may be thought of as most evident in science, geography and citizenship education, it has many similarities with creative subjects such as art education. Our initial inquiry, therefore, took the form of a systematic literature review (Authors 2024) that identified twelve ways in which LfS and art education overlap. These overlaps or commonalities span across four themes: (a) not-knowing - embracing ambiguity and uncertainty, (b) planning ahead - futures thinking and hope, (c) experiential learning and engagement, and (d) collaboration – co-creation. As well as presenting these findings, we will discuss the results of the analysis of the interviews with art, science, geography, English and maths teachers on how assessment of students’ ability to negotiate the feeling of not-knowing is currently assessed. Preliminary analysis has already highlighted the significance of practical work in science and field work in geography. While our focus is on secondary education in England, we expect these findings and the themes that we will discuss in relation to the assessment of students’ skills and dispositions around negotiating an unknown future, to have implications for education more generally both internationally and across different phases of education.

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