ESD Journal Club

Room C 40.162 and online · Facilitator: Daniel Fischer

Skarstein, F. (2026). Demoting ecocentrism: towards ethical pluralism in sustainability education. Environmental Education Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2026.2704075 (open access)

Reading questions

1. Content comprehension. Skarstein separates ecocentrism as one ethical perspective from ecocentrism as a framework with normative authority in sustainability education. What exactly does he object to, and what does he not object to? What does he mean by "long-sighted anthropocentrism", and why does he present it as a "pedagogical point of departure" rather than a normatively authoritative position (p. 8)?
2. Critical appraisal. The essay argues that "the educational danger […] is not ecocentrism itself, but moral closure" (p. 6). At the same time, it says sustainability education "cannot be ethically neutral" and may be guided by commitments such as "non-violence, democratic participation, social justice, ecological responsibility, and respect for human dignity" (p. 10). Where does the line between legitimate normative commitments and "orthodoxy" run, and does the argument draw that line convincingly?
3. Application and transfer. Where in our own work (teaching, teacher education, teaching materials, competence frameworks, our research designs) do we treat a contested ethical position as a "given"? Thinking back to JC000: if learners resist because of their values, is an ethically pluralist framing a fruitful way to engage with that resistance?
4. Optional. How does Skarstein's distinction between ethical inquiry and ethical prescription compare with the Beutelsbach Consensus in civic education (the ban on overwhelming learners, the requirement to present controversial issues as controversial)? Does it add anything that consensus does not already cover?

Room C 7.307 · Facilitator: Daniel Fischer

Urberg, L., Tryggvason, Á., & Öhman, J. (2026). Teachers' didactic approaches to students' resistance in Environmental and Sustainability Education. Environmental Education Research, 32(9), 2791–2810. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2026.2664011

The paper in one line

Based on interviews with nine Swedish secondary-school teachers, the paper distinguishes two forms of student resistance in ESE (factual and value-related) and three didactic approaches teachers use to respond to it (relation-oriented, knowledge-oriented and value-oriented).

Discussion

• The three approaches are not on the same level. In our reading, the relation-oriented approach is a precondition for the other two: it creates the trust and the space in which controversial positions can be voiced and resistance can be expressed at all. The knowledge-oriented approach works on an epistemic level (what counts as knowledge, and how to deal with contradictory evidence or bodies of knowledge that rest on different validity claims and lead to different conclusions). The value-oriented approach concerns the implications for students' own lives, where the discussion turns into personal restrictions, moral and action imperatives or calls to change one's life or position, and where resistance grows out of exactly that. The approaches build on each other and overlap considerably. Knowledge production itself rests on assumptions, values, worldviews and methodological and epistemological premises, so a clean separation between the knowledge- and the value-oriented approach does not quite hold.
• Relational practices deserve more attention. They easily drop out of view when a curriculum is strongly content-driven. Since sustainability is a normative field that is oriented towards everyday practices anyway, it is tempting to stay with the knowledge- and value-oriented approaches and to neglect the relational one.
• Open question: how do the forms of resistance relate to the approaches? The paper does not really map factual and value-related resistance onto the three approaches; the link remains implicit. It would be worth exploring how each form of resistance could be addressed relationally, through knowledge-oriented or through value-oriented approaches, and what this would mean for practice.

Takeaways for our work

• Treat resistance as productive educational potential. If we take resistance seriously, allow it and engage with it openly, meaningful learning can grow out of it, and it can also lead us to question our own positions.
• Keep the image of the quiet classroom in mind. One teacher (Mats) describes the "worst class" not as "the rowdy and loud lads", but as those who "just sit quietly and do as I say", where "it is only my words" (Urberg et al., 2026, p. 2803).