The overall aim of the article is to present a pragmatic approach for studies of meaning-making used in the articles of this issue. The approach, which is developed within the SMEDgroup (Studies of Meaning-making in Educational Discourses), mainly builds on the writings of John Dewey, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michel Foucault. A common ambition for the researchers in SMED is to enable studies and discussions on questions concerning how meanings are made in people’s actions. Another ambition is to carry out these studies beyond assumptions of dualism, essentialism, causality and determinism. In this perspective learning and socialization are viewed in a communicative perspective. We argue in the article that our approach makes it possible, and important, to study meaning-making in action in different kinds of educational practices.
En presentation av det didaktiska angreppssättet som ligger till grund för temat Didaktiska undersökningar i Utbildning och demokrati nr 3, 2008.
The overall aim of this paper is to present and discuss a pragmatic approach for studies of meaning-making in different educational practices. The approach – built on a framework developed within the SMED-group (Studies of Meaning-making in Educational Discourses) at the universities of Uppsala and Örebro – is illustrated in a number of empirical studies. The main point of departure in the studies is taken in pragmatic curriculum theory and sociocultural perspectives on learning, and is inspired mainly by John Dewey, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michel Foucault. A special focus is directed to communication practices and content selection within Physical education, Environmental education and Science education. A common ambition is to offer a language that enables studies and discussions on questions concerning how meanings are made in people’s actions. Another ambition is to make these investigations beyond assumptions of dualisms, essentialism, causality and determinism. In this perspective learning and socialisation is viewed in communicative perspective. Therefore, many of the studies are built on video recorded classroom conversations, but also on analysis of various kinds of written texts. We argue in the paper that this approach makes it possible to study meaning-making – learning and socialisation – in different kinds of educational practices.
Young people’s conversations about environmental and sustainability issues in social media and their educational implications are under-researched. Understanding young people’s meaning-making in social media and the experiences they acquire could help teachers to stage pluralistic and participatory approaches to classroom discussions about the environment and sustainability. The aim of the article is to explore the characteristics of meaning-making in young people’s conversations about environmental and sustainability issue in social media, more precisely in an online community. The study takes a public pedagogy and citizenship-as-practice approach and uses Epistemological Move Analysis. The conversation are shown to be argumentative, sophisticated, elaborative and competitive and create an educational situation in which facts about the world and moral and political values and interests are confronted and argued. The findings raise questions about pluralistic and participatory approaches and the staging of classroom conversations in environmental and sustainability education.
The overall aim of this article is to develop in-depth knowledge about the connection between outdoor experiences and moral attitudes towards nature. The study focuses on processes in which moral relations are at stake in encounters between students and nature. The purpose is to identify such events, describe their specific circumstances and clarify how moral relations are established in these events. The empirical material consists of video-recordings of activities in three different outdoor education practices. In order to identify and categorise moral situations, an analytical tool called the ethical tendency is used. This tool is based on Wittgenstein’s language game method. The findings show that in the investigated outdoor education practices, moral relations towards nature are established in several different ways. The article concludes with four educational implications: responsibility when dealing with moral reactions; bring- ing ethical questions to the fore; different educational conditions create different encounters with nature; and the consequences of different language games.
This paper explores various kinds of logics of‘business education for sustainability’and how these ‘logics’ position the subject business person, based on eight teachers’ reasoning of their own practices. The concept of logics developed within a discourse theoretical framework is employed to analyse the teachers’ reasoning. The analysis takes its starting point in different approaches to how a business ought to or could take responsibility for sustainable development. Different approaches to business ethical responsibilities, in combination with assumptions about how educational content is legitimised and presupposed purposes of education, are used to construct logics of business education for sustainability. In the paper, the results of this analysis are presented as: the logic of profit-, social- or radical-oriented business education.Our results also showhow the different logics position the subject business person differently, as one who adapts to,adds or creates ethical values. The results are first discussed in terms of how environmental and social challenges could be dealt with in the future and secondly, considering the risk of de-subjectification with regard to profit-oriented business education, the implications this may have for the educational quality itself.
Detta är en av fyra rapporter som ger en översiktlig bild av resultaten från en nationell enkätundersökning om friluftsliv och naturturism i Sverige. Studien är genomförd av forskningsprogrammet Friluftsliv i förändring. Resultaten som presenteras här fokuserar bl a på vilka som är ute i naturen och vilka aktiviteter man ägnar sig åt.
Continued unsustainability and surpassed planetary boundaries require not only scientific and technological advances, but deep and enduring social and cultural changes. The purpose of this article is to contribute a theoretical approach to understand conditions and constraints for societal change towards sustainable development. In order to break with unsustainable norms, habits, practices, and structures, there is a need for learning for transformation, not only adaption. Based on a critical literature review within the field of learning for sustainable development, our approach is a development of the concept of transformative learning, by integrating three additional dimensions—Institutional Structures, Social Practices, and Conflict Perspectives. This approach acknowledges conflicts on macro, meso, and micro levels, as well as structural and cultural constraints. It contends that transformative learning is processual, interactional, long-term, and cumbersome. It takes place within existing institutions and social practices, while also transcending them. The article adopts an interdisciplinary social science perspective that acknowledges the importance of transformative learning in order for communities, organizations, and individuals to be able to deal with global sustainability problems, acknowledging the societal and personal conflicts involved in such transformation.
This entry reviews the concept of transformative learning. Transformative learning theory stresses a learning perspective for situations when actors in (self-)critical ways recognize and reassess basic assumptions and expectations that steer their thinking, feeling, and acting. The theory relies on the humanistic assumption that people have, via deliberative acts, inner capacities to change circumstances. Transformative learning is defined as the process through which actors transform problematic frames of reference. The concept has been applied broadly in sustainability studies, including environmental sociology. The entry discusses five such fields of research, with relevance for environmental sociology: (1) environmental and sustainability education research, (2) the role of emotions in relation to, for example, climate change, (3) research on environmental activism, (4) lifestyle change, and (5), on transformative learning on community/organizational levels.
The purpose of the chapter is to develop Jürgen Habermas's idea of deliberation into a model of deliberative communication in relation to issues of sustainable development and security education
Philosophers of education are largely unaware of Dewey's concept of transactionalism, yet it is implicit in much of his philosophy, educational or otherwise from the late 1890s onwards. Written by scholars from Belgium, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and the USA, this book shows how transactionalism can offer an entirely new way of understanding teaching and learning, the individual and sociocultural dimension of education, and educational research. The contributors show how the concept helps us to see beyond an array of false dualisms, such as mind versus body, self versus society, and organism versus environment, as well as an equally vast array of binaries, such as inside-outside, presence-absence, and male-female. They introduce the key critical ideas that transactionalism represents including emergence; living in a world without a within; the temporally and extensionally distributed nature of meaning, mind, and self. The use and elaboration of transactionalism is grounded in philosophical inquires and in empirical analyses of practices in formal and informal settings including values education, early childhood education, biology education, museum education, coding and computer science, Oceanographic and Atmospheric study, policy reform, play, and the Covid-19 pandemic.
The question of how sustainability can be incorporated into all areas of society encourages museums to rethink their approaches to society and education. In this article, we argue that museums have the potential to become key public pedagogies for sustainable development and thereby play a crucial role in encouraging participation in sustainability issues. Due to the complexity of sustainability issues, and the potential disturbances of and difficult experiences resulting from exhibitions displaying them, we suggest that a theoretical framing for the teaching and learning of sustainability issues in museums is necessary. Thus, we argue that in relation to exhibitions displaying sustainability issues, museum education would benefit from a didactical framework in which the relation between teaching, learning, content and situation is taken into account. We also argue that a theoretical framework explaining the relation between exhibition, visitor and educational situation could inform pedagogical discussions about how to incorporate sustainability education into museums. Therefore, we suggest a transactional conceptualization of museum pedagogy for sustainability museum education based on John Dewey’s educational and aesthetic philosophy and Louise Rosenblatt’s theory of reading and writing as a potential approach to the teaching and learning of sustainability issues in museum education.
Research into preschool education has paid a lot of attention to investigating children’s conceptual development and cognitive learning aboutnature, with methods based on observations and verbal interviews before and after a teaching period. The purpose of this study has been to present and illustrate an approach that facilitates the analysis of practical meaning making in Early Childhood Education. The study is largely based on John Dewey’s pragmatism and has a particular focus on his use of transaction, functional coordination, inquiry, educative experience and nature. In this context meaning making is understood as the growing, learning process that contributes to further actions in extended ways. A transactional approach to physical experiences, with a focus on analyses of toddlers’ bodily actions in nature encounters, is illustrated by a video recording of a toddler’s encounter with icy and clay surfaces. This encounter was analysed using Practical Epistemological Analysis. Toddlers’ inquiry processes were studied with a specific focus on functional coordination, i.e. relations between different actions and their consequences when meeting the environment. The methodological approach contributes to further research by focusing on practical and physical learning processes. It can also be seen as a contribution to Early Childhood Science Education by showing the relation between previous experiences of natural phenomena and meaning making for further actions in extended ways.
Previous research has shown that the Swedish preschool educational tradition is characterised by outdoor-oriented and democratic approaches. The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate what consequences these approaches have for preschool children's meaning-making of nature, when studied in practice, in children's spontaneous outdoor activities. The methodology is based on John Dewey's pragmatism with a specific focus on transaction, habits and customs. A transactional analysis method has been developed to fulfil the purpose of the investigation. The analysis illuminates relations between: (1) the Swedish preschool's educational tradition in terms of national customs; and (2) the local customs expressed in practice. Fifty-seven events were chosen for further analysis including play with water and sand, and sliding on snow. Consequences for children's meaning-making of nature are shown as possibilities for experience-based inquiry based on children's own choices and also for enjoying and feeling good in nature. The results show fewer possibilities for scientific concept learning. The results can thus be seen as a contribution to the early childhood educational discussion about how to arrange learning situations of natural phenomena and processes in preschools and at the same time maintain their democratic/outdoor-oriented characteristics
Research has shown that early childhood science education is based on education and care, sometimes stressed as a dichotomy. The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the relations between teachers’ teaching and children’s learning in preschool practice, both in terms of educative processes and nature-oriented content. The ambition is also to develop and present an analysis method that facilitates these investigations. Outdoor nature experiences of preschool children (aged one to three) were video-recorded, transcribed and analysed. The methodology is based on John Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy. Here, epistemological move analysis (oriented towards teachers’ guiding processes as moves) and substantive learning quality analysis (oriented towards multi-dimensional learning qualities) are developed and used as analysis tools. The analyses show that the relations between teaching and learning processes and nature content are intertwined and include education and care. The teachers guide towards aesthetical, moral, cognitive and physical qualities in learning by challenging, admonishing, instructional, confirming, generative, reorienting and reconstructing moves. The results contribute to nature-oriented teaching practice and nature-oriented preschool research when discussing and investigating teaching and learning processes and nature content.
Research has shown that early childhood science education is based on education and care, sometimes stressed as a dichotomy. The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the relations between teachers’ teaching and children’s learning in preschool practice, both in terms of educative processes and nature oriented content. The ambition is also to develop and present an analysis method that facilitates these investigations. Outdoor nature experiences of preschool children (aged 1-3) were video-recorded, transcribed and analysed. The methodology is based on John Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy. Here, Epistemological Move Analysis, oriented toward teachers’ guiding processes as moves, and Substantive Learning Quality Analysis, oriented toward multidimensional learning qualities, are developed and used as analysis tools. The analyses show that the relations between teaching and learning processes and nature content are intertwined and include education and care. The teachers guide towards aesthetical, moral, cognitive and physical qualities in learning by challenging, admonishing, instructional, confirming, generative, reorienting and reconstructing moves. The results contribute to nature-oriented teaching practice and nature-oriented preschool research when discussing and investigating teaching and learning processes and nature content.
This article suggests that environmental ethics can have great relevance for environmental ethical content analyses in environmental education and education for sustainable development research. It is based on a critique that existing educational research does not reflect the variety of environmental ethical theories. Accordingly, we suggest an alternative and more nuanced environmental ethical conceptual framework divided into Value-oriented Environmental Ethics and Relation-oriented Environmental Ethics and present two pragmatic schedules for analyses of the value and relation contents of e.g. classroom conversations, textbooks and policy documents. This framework draws on a comparative reading of some 30 key books and 20 key articles in academic journals in the field of environmental philosophy and reflects main traits in environmental ethics from the early 1970s to the present day.
Improvisation in general music education is still a somewhat underdeveloped practice. Moreover, attempts to justify its place in the curriculum have often focused solely on its (measurable) outcomes. In this article, we claim that a deeper understanding of students' meaning-making processes in experiences of improvisation is necessary in order to develop improvisation practice and research. The purpose of this article is to offer a music education perspective on improvisation based on John Dewey's transactional perspective on aesthetic experience and meaning-making. Related to this, we suggest and illustrate a Practical Epistemology Analysis (PEA) as a way of analysing meaning-making in music improvisation within general music education. The method of analysis is illustrated by vignettes from video analyses of music lessons in two Swedish schools with pupils aged 9-10 and their free improvisations. The vignettes show how PEA enables analyses of situated meaning-making in the progress of the pupils' improvisation activities. Further, the transactional perspective makes educational values of improvisation visible, such as musical and personal agency, and elucidates cognitive, embodied and ethical aspects of musical meaning-making.
This paper contributes to the debate about the absence of nonhuman animals (The term ‘nonhuman animal’ is used to emphasise the interconnection with the human being, viewed as a human animal. Using this terminology does not avoid a homogenising, stereotyping and simplifying of a multiplicity of animal (and human) beings. Nonetheless, we think that such a ‘simplification’ of concepts is inescapable in academic discussions concerning humans and nonhuman animals.) in environmental and sustainable education (ESE) and the challenge of the anthropocentric characterisation of European education. Relating to the debate about a pluralistic approach in ESE as a ‘one-species only pluralism’, we draw on Val Plumwood’s ecofeministic dialogical interspecies ethics and Rosi Braidotti’s understanding of a posthuman/ nomadic subjectivity. By regarding ‘difference’ as a constituting force, we present a ‘critical pluralistic’ approach to human-animal relationships in ESE. Instead of drawing new lines of moral consideration for nonhuman beings, an ethical and political appreciation of what nonhuman others can do in ESE is suggested. Recommendations for educational practice are to recognise nonhuman agency to reveal political and ethical dimensions, recognise the agency of non-living animals and stay in conflicts and ‘study up’ and develop an immanent critique, which could lead to alternative pedagogical approaches to human-animal relationships in different cross-curricula settings.
The purpose of this paper is to suggest and describe a methodological approach for studies of learning within school physical education (PE) in order to investigate and clarify issues of learning in an embodied practice. Drawing on John Dewey’s work, and especially his use of the concept transaction, a transactional approach is suggested as a way of developing an action-orientated method necessary for investigating learning in PE. The approach is illustrated by extracts from a video analysis of a PE lesson in Sweden, and shows how an analytical focus on meaning making, actions, events and participators in meaning-making processes can help to overcome methodological challenges related to dualist and cognitivist approaches and reach a deeper knowledge of student learning issues in PE.
This chapter focuses on students’ learning in argumentation that takes place in educational practices. The authors first clarify how an argument can be understood as consisting of different elements when it comes to classroom discussions. Drawing on earlier research, they then clarify questions that are important for teachers to think about in relation to students’ learning, their use of knowledge and the importance of peer interactions. They conclude that argumentation can be a fruitful method in the teaching of complex, value-related issues. In argumentation, the students not only learn and use content knowledge, but also learn how to formulate valid arguments in order to participate in deliberative discussions. The findings show that teachers have an important role to play with regard to the quality and diversity of the deliberation.
In the international policy debate, environmental education and education for sustainable development seem to be moving away from a focus on behavioural modifications to more pluralistic approaches. This article illuminates a Swedish example of a strategic interplay between evaluation, development and research that relates to this shift, involving actors from schools, governmental agencies and researchers. The specific purpose of the research was to analyse and describe teachers' attempts to stimulate a pluralistic meaning-making process among their students in the context of education for sustainable development. The empirical material consisted of video-recorded lessons in secondary and upper secondary schools. In the analysis we used a methodological approach based on John Dewey's pragmatic philosophy and Ludwig Wittgenstein's first-person perspective on language. A concept called 'epistemological moves' has been used to clarify the actions that teachers perform in order to guide students in procedures of meaning-making. The analysis shows that the teachers perform a number of actions that make pluralistic meaning-making possible: encouraging the students to compare, specify, generalise and test their arguments under different circumstances. The teachers also encouraged the students to examine and evaluate different alternatives and be critical of their own statements. Finally, the findings are related to a perspective of democracy as a form of life.
The purpose of this article is to investigate in situ the functions that knowledge has when used by students in argumentative discussions. The study is based on Dewey’s pragmatic perspective of knowledge, which means that knowledge gets its meaning in the activity at hand. The analyses are conducted using Transac- tional Argumentation Analysis, which is a combination of pragmatic meaning analysis and Toulmin’s argument pattern. The empirical material consists of video-recorded lessons from two seminars in a Swedish upper secondary school. The results show that knowledge plays a crucial role in the discussions. Six dif- ferent functions are identified: emphasising complexity, clarifying and correcting, highlighting conflicting interests, providing evidence in a counterargument, predicting the consequences and adding support to an earlier claim. Knowledge also has general functions, such as justifying a claim, and is part of a collective process aimed at understanding the issues discussed. Further, the students use knowledge from different disciplines, such as environmental studies, history, politics, biology and human geography.
The purpose is to illustrate a method that facilitates investigations of students’ learning processes in classroom discussions through in situ studies. In environmental and sustainability education there has been a shift to more participatory approaches (see Englund, Öhman and Östman 2008; Huckle 2008). Participatory approaches focus on communication in order to stimulate a critical examination of different views in the debate about different questions and problems relating to the environmental issues. This means a relocation of the process of knowledge and value constitution from before to in the educational event. In this way education is expected to become more democratic and pluralistic. This has led to an increasing interest for student discussions and the importance of argumentation in discussions about environmental and socioscientific issues have been highlighted. The method has been developed in order to conduct investigations of, i) student’s learning progress in terms of the way the arguments are constructed and the knowledge content used, ii) the interplay between the intra-personal and inter-personal dimensions of meaning making, and iii) the role of knowledge in students’ argumentative discussions. The method, called transactional argumentation analysis, TAA, combines a transactional perspective on meaning making based on John Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy (1949/1991) and an argument analysis based on Toulmin’s argument pattern (1958/2003) (see further Rudsberg, Öhman & Östman, 2013). The direction of the students’ meaning making is analysed as the relations construed in and by action. Further, a functional interpretation of Toulmin’s argument pattern is used to clarify the meanings in terms of argumentative elements. The investigated conversations are characterised by a participatory educational practice concerning socioscientific issues. The discussions can be said to be open-ended, even though they follow specific rules for the ‘correct’ way of creating meaning, i.e., how to participate in a pluralistic act of communication about value-related issues. In this way the process is an essential part of the learning content and the examined practice can be seen as a way of learning to ‘live democratically’, which from a theoretical perspective relates to a view of democracy as a communicative activity – democracy as a life form.
In this study, the purpose is to develop and illustrate a method that facilitates investigations of students' learning processes in classroom discussions about socioscientific issues. The method, called transactional argumentation analysis, combines a transactional perspective on meaning making based on John Dewey's pragmatic philosophy and an argument analysis based on Toulmin's argument pattern. This analytical method consists of three steps. In the first step, we analyze the direction of the students' meaning making, that is, the relations construed in and by action. In the second step, we use a functional interpretation of Toulmin's argument pattern to clarify the meanings in terms of argumentative elements. Finally, we investigate the students' learning progress, both in terms of the way the arguments are constructed and the knowledge content used, by comparing each student's arguments over time. The empirical material consists of a video-recorded lesson in a Swedish upper secondary school. Two examples of learning processes identified during the classroom discussion are described: learning to specify the conditions for one's claim and learning to find new solutions. These examples show that the suggested method can be used to identify the different kinds of learning progressions that take place during students' argumentative discussions.
The purpose of this paper is to suggest an outdoor education model that respects the need to critically discuss the general belief in a causal relationship between experiences of nature, environmentally-friendly attitudes and behavioural change, but that at the same time respects the legitimate claims on the part of outdoor education practice for concretisation and clarity. The foundation of this model consists of a combination of theoretical perspectives and models that have been generated through a number of Swedish interdisciplinary research projects concerning human interrelationships with the landscape during the last decade. The paper first focuses on the subtleties of environmental concern with the aid of an environmentally historic model of how care for nature and environmental protection successively developed during the last century. It then addresses different aspects of outdoor education by presenting two specific models: a model of two principally diverse motives for this education, and a model of three different approaches to the landscape when executing outdoor education. In the final section these models are assembled in a suggested model for outdoor education and environmental concern, and identify a handful of main educational paths. The paper concludes with a brief discussion about continued research and examples of what can be regarded as particularly important developments and additions to the suggested model.
Direct encounters with the natural environment have a long tradition in environmental education. Given that the role and character of these encounters are shaped by the approach taken to environmental or sustainability education, there is a risk that a shift towards pluralistic and political approaches will lead to a neglect of nature encounters. On the basis of an analysis of Swedish/Scandinavian outdoor and environmental history and current Swedish outdoor education practice, we suggest six potentials of encounters with nature: (1) an experience-based meaning of nature; (2) a relational ethical perspective; (3) the addition of a fourth perspective to sustainable development; (4) human ecology in practice; (5) sensing the quality of a simple life; and (6) democracy, identity and dwelling. We argue that these potentials widen the scope of environmental and sustainability education, while highlighting the need for a situated, dynamic and process-oriented concept of nature, rather than a static one in which nature is understood as a particular place or specific organisms.
Previous studies have demonstrated that there is a positive relationship between learning activities and health in general and that learning has a positive impact on the psychological, mental and social aspects of health. Despite this, there are still unanswered questions about the relationship between and the concepts of health and learning. The aim of this review has been to map and synthesise research on the relationship between learning and health for older adults in organised or institutionalised education using a conceptual analysis model. The results demonstrate that intrinsic values like learning for its own sake and the joy of learning are emphasised. Moreover, individual factors of health are emphasised and several different concepts are used to explain health. In the final synthesis, four logics are identified concerning the relationship between learning and health: Learning as Quality of Life, Learning as Social Networks, Learning as a Means for Coping and Learning as a Means for Reducing Risk. In conclusion, there is a need for a more in-depth understanding of the ontological and epistemological grounds for learning and health in the field in order to strengthen the cumulative knowledge production about the relationship between older adults learning and health.
This study aims to acquire more knowledge about the meaning of intrinsic values in organisedpost-work non-formal educational activities for older adults. Observations andfocus group interviews were conducted at a senior university in Sweden. John Dewey’sconcept of experience and theory of value are used to facilitate a deeper understandingof the intrinsic values that were identified. The results of the study demonstrate whatintrinsic values in education for older adults can be, as well as how they are experienced.Several intrinsic values were identified: (i) new insights and widened perspectives, (ii)the reflective process, (iii) enrichment, (iv) meaningfulness, (v) enjoyment, (vi)peacefulness, (vii) existential awareness, (viii) relational support and (ix) sense ofcommunity. The results further reveal how the values of education are experienced in theinteractions and relations between older individuals and the social environment in theongoing education and that the activities themselves are valued by the participants.
The aim with this article is to contribute knowledge about the meanings of friluftsliv in educational practice. This is done by investigating what friluftsliv becomes in the ongoing practices of PETE in Sweden and how these meanings are established in the studied activities. The empirical material consists of different kinds of material from friluftsliv activities in PETE programmes: study guides, field trip plans, students' vlogs from overnight stays outdoors, video recordings from two longer field trips, audio recordings from evening seminars during the field trips and students' written reflections after them. In order to identify meanings of friluftsliv and how these are established we used a transactional analysis based on Dewey. Five different ways of what friluftsliv becomes in PETE practice were identified in this study. The different meanings reflect the complex picture of contradictions and lack of common ground for the content and motives identified in the outdoor education field. Our study also confirms how the meaning of friluftsliv as skills is established by putting up tents, lighting fires, building wind shelters and so on, and how this contributes to a focus on the instrumental values in PETE. On the other hand, our study shows that other meanings of friluftsliv are established in the ongoing practice, where more intrinsic values are at stake even if they are often overshadowed in PETE practice. In conclusion the results also point to the potential of fritluftsliv in terms of a suggested move away from an activity-based personal and social development discourse in favour of experiences of educating for environmentally sustainable human-nature relations. The challenge is how to make these experiences educational in PETE and how to guide students in transforming experiences in more exclusive friluftsliv into pedagogical competence as future teachers using friluftsliv for different purposes in school PE.