The paper draws on the current ERASMUS funded Intensive Programme (IP) Education for Sustainability; exploring hopeful pathways to preferable local and global futures shared by 8 departments from 8 Higher Education Institutions across the European region providing training for teachers,  social pedagogues and human resource managers.  The urban contexts represented in the IP reflect the diversity of social, economic, cultural/religious and technological milieu that can be found within the wider boundaries of the European learning region. The IP is being hosted in Daugavpils, Latvia.

The themes of ‘hopefulness’  and ‘preference’ have been emphasised  to ensure that this diverse group of students and staff engage wholeheartedly and critically with the social, cultural, spiritual, economic and ethical dynamics and  transitions that are emerging from our shared uncertain ecological predicament .  The agreed learning programme includes elements of i) research within a community context within each region, ii) personal narratives approaches, iii) the study of emerging sustainability education policies, iv) engagement with informal learning networks / organisations and v) critical future scoping of transformational steps that may be required to address the inter-relationship between our everyday lives  and climate change.

The theoretical framework for the enquiry has already been rehearsed within recently published work by the authors (Clough 2010, Clough and Tarr 2011a, Clough and Tarr 2011b) that draw on Freire, Stenhouse, Bakhtin  and Stake to i) argue the case for the primacy of participation and action for developing critical perspectives through HE and ii) explore the contribution of situational evaluation for understanding the quality of learning in HE.   It is argued that assisting students’ reflection in action within the HE context is a complementary educational process that progresses from students’ own actions to their dialogic explorations  within classroom environments and  also within wider community learning partnerships. 

The core research question that is driving the research within the IP and which is to be reported in the paper concerns the relationship between different  pedagogical paradigms that are evoked within educational responses to climate change  and other matters of social and cultural concern (Clough 2010, Clough and Tarr 2011b).  Even in the preparation for the IP, students and staff are beginning  to differentiate between forms of sustainability education that are predicated on state policy formulation (assertive responses within hierarchic frameworks) and integrative learning approaches (personal culturally based learning within informal critical networks).   The identified research questions are about i) the value attached by learners in higher education to personal narrative  approaches  ii) the contribution of personal narrative approaches  to developing capacity for dialogic and critical review of European-wide policies for sustainability education.    

The discussion and analysis will relate to the published conference themes through exploring the contributions of interdisciplinary approaches and engagement with informal urban educational settings to the proactive shaping of European civil society in the face of uncertain ecological futures.  

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