This presentation takes its point of departure in recognizing us living in a world of societal changes and environmental crises where needs of new thinking and sustainable actions are demanded.  I am here especially focusing a current educational situation roughly described to be in the core of different demands and expectations. Firstly, Education for sustainable development (ESD) is nowadays regarded as a societal issue, where young people’s possibilities to act commonly and engage in society is a crucial aim and outcome in the UNESCO documents. Secondly and quite opposite, the mainstream educational curricula are described to be striving the other direction; towards more control of individual pre-determined knowledge through tests, and with less options of innovations, critical thinking and a knowledge in-use .

Standing in this crossfire of different educational politics and ideas the situation is assumed to be a delicate issue to handle for teachers in practice. This presentation is based on a case study of a “Climate Council school project” (cf. WWF) where school students, teachers and members of the local government met and discussed sustainability issues. I intend to focus and discuss both dilemmas and unexpected possibilities when taking on new educational challenges and transdisciplinary teaching such as sustainable development, and how the concept of Sustainable literacy might be useful in educational settings today.

With an interest in the role of emotions and values in students' meaning-making in Environmental and Sustainability Education a case study was carried out in a Swedish school-class with students, 12 years of age. During a six-week thematic group-work focusing environmental and sustainability issues related to food, the students were observed and interviewed in their daily school practice. The results are presented here through narrative reporting, and analysed with the use of Dewey's theoretical perspectives on experience, distinguishing three phases in a process: a start, an activity phase and a closure. Martha Nussbaum's theory of emotions is used to assist in the understanding of emotions and values. The study reports on active and independent meaning-making processes in students' group work. The results provide examples of students' meaning-making experiences and the role of emotions and values in them, indicating that more of values are formed and expressed in the concluding phase.

In this presentation I will outline some ethical dimensions found in children’s meaning-making processes when studying environmental and sustainability issues. The presentation is based on my doctoral thesis where school children aged 10-12 took part in two empirical studies. The first study was a comprehensive questionnaire including open ended questions. The second study was a case study in one grade 6 class for one school semester. Both studies focused how children in these ages understood, valued and made meaning in environmental and sustainability issues. The overall methodology for my thesis was mixed methods. The methods used when analyzing were in the first study thematic content analysis for the open questions, and statistics on both a descriptive level and a relational level. In the second study, the case study, a number of empirical sources were used in order to analyze children’s meaning-making processes over time in two different school contexts, one more practical outdoors and one indoors, more digital. The theoretical frameworks used in these studies are John Dewey’s theories on aesthetic experience and learning, and also Martha Nussbaum’s theories regarding emotions and values. My results reveal that there are different kinds of ethical dimensions in children’s understanding, valuing and actions. One dimension concerns aspects of environmental ethics when children express how they value nature. Other dimensions concern how children form values from emotional responses. Finally, I will discuss what might be learnt in ethics when environmental and sustainability issues are focused in educational activities.

This study uses John Dewey’s theoretical concept of ‘aesthetic experience’ in empirically exploring expressions of cognition and emotion in students’ meaning-making processes. A case study was conducted in one class of Grade 6 students during a single school semester. This article reports results from five outdoor days. The empirical material consists of observations, field notes, logbook entries, interviews and students’ written reflections. The students’ meaning-making processes were analyzed through the Deweyan theory of an initial phase involving anticipation, an activity phase with courses of actions and a concluding phase with reflections that serve as fulfillments. Expressions of aesthetic experience were identified in four important components of the students’ meaning-making processes: prior personal experiences; responses to environments and artifacts; social interaction; and situations allowing for responsibility, trust and independence. A more in-depth process-oriented analysis revealed that aesthetic experiences are vital in continuous meaning-making processes.