- Convenors:
-
Hanne Svarstad
(Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet))
Alfredo Jornet Gil (University of Girona)
Gustav Cederlöf (University of Gothenburg)
Jørund Aasetre (Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU))
- Format:
- Panel
Format/Structure
Each 90 min session will be filled with up to four papers for presentation and discussion.
Long Abstract
Since 2015, education institutions all over the world have experienced a new wave of attention to sustainable development, environmental degradation, and global warming. In the same period, a promising sub-field of political ecology of education has been established, following Meek (2015), and Meek and Lloro-Bidart (2017). However, so far political ecology perspectives seem hardly at all to have reached either teacher education programs or been reflected in primary or secondary schools. Political ecology is also poorly reflected in the growing body of academic literature on education about sustainable development and related issues. Thus, new generations of youth seem to continue to learn mainstream narratives at school that political ecology research often has revealed to be misleading and problematic.
For this panel, we welcome papers with – but not restricted to - any of the following contents:
• Critical examinations of cases of curricula, teaching contents or classroom approaches in comparison with insights from political ecology;
• Critical examinations of contents of the academic literature on education on sustainable development, the environment, or global warming in comparison to relevant research findings and approaches within political ecology;
• Ways of elaborating and/or introducing elements of political ecology of education so that it is reflected at teacher education, at school, or in other educational contexts;
• Presentations of experimental studies of teaching practices based on political ecology of education;
• Discussions of how to increase recruitment of political ecologists for positions at teacher education institutes at colleges and universities.
References
Meek, D. 2015. Towards a political ecology of education: the educational politics of scale in southern Pará, Brazil. Environmental education research, 21(3), 447-459. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2014.993932
Meek, D., and Lloro-Bidart, T. 2017. Introduction: Synthesizing a political ecology of education. The Journal of Environmental Education, 48(4), 213-225.https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2017.1340054
Accepted papers
Presentation short abstract
Water museums are emerging but understudied in their political embeddedness and relevance. We analyze four European cases regarding the stories of water told and their educational aims. Our findings stress the importance of political imagination in water education for just socio-ecological futures.
Presentation long abstract
Museums dedicated to water are a relatively recent phenomenon, yet they play a pivotal role in environmental education and have been under-studied in their political relevance; the aim of this paper is to address this gap. Bridging museum education studies with environmental politics, we understand the museum as a power-imbued institution of knowledge, actively shaping socio-ecological relations in their current state and their future(s).
Empirically, through ethnographic visits and qualitative content analysis, we analyze four European water museums (Turin, Paris, Porto, Lisbon) in their content and the interactive educational tools employed. We pay particular attention to what stories of water are being told, what meaning of water they convey and the educational aims of the interactive tools including their ethical and political implications. Understanding ourselves as facilitators of knowledge, we also aim to develop an educational tool with a story-telling approach striving to mobilize political imagination that derives from, and simultaneously feeds, our analysis. Our commitment is to emancipatory education that considers the politics of water and contributes to social and ecological justices.
The findings underline the importance of considering politics within water education, contributing to the understanding of education as entrenched in political and economic structures nevertheless with the potential to promote their transformation towards plural and just socio-ecological futures.
Presentation short abstract
In this paper, I argue that teaching political ecology in higher education should involve a praxis of subjectivation—enabling students to recognise and position themselves within environmental injustices. Drawing on teaching exercises, I explore strategies for embodied and transformative learning.
Presentation long abstract
Political ecologists have long shown that practices of “sustainable development” depoliticise environmental struggles and can perpetuate colonial logics. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the notion of Education for Sustainable Development for many provokes a sense of unease. But what would it mean to instead educate for environmental justice—or even for political ecology itself? While most professional political ecologists teach and do research in universities, the emerging subfield of the political ecology of education has paid limited attention to higher education. The critical gaze has yet to turn inward.
In this paper, I argue that teaching political ecology at the university level should stimulate a practice of “subjectivation”: a process through which students (and teachers) become subjects of their own learning. Beyond developing conceptual and analytical understanding of environmental inequalities, teaching must also enable students to recognise—and sense—their own position within these dynamics, making learning embodied, political, and actionable. Drawing on exercises from my own teaching practice at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) and King’s College London (UK), I reflect on teaching strategies that move beyond knowledge transmission to cultivate subjectivation and situated learning. The aim is to start a conversation about how we as university teachers qualify students as political ecologists while positioning them reflexively within the politicised environments they study and inhabit.
Presentation short abstract
This paper unpacks the transformative potential of political ecology education through lived experiences of multidisciplinary bachelor students taking a political ecology-led Sustainability minor program at Tilburg University in The Netherlands.
Presentation long abstract
Sustainability has become a central topic in Dutch university education, with staff and schools encouraged to demonstrate links between their programs and the SDGs. A leading social science university in The Netherlands, Tilburg University positions sustainability as central to its programs and aims to train students to develop a ‘critical mindset’ and ‘contribute to a just and sustainable society’. Despite these propositions, sustainability education is largely grounded in positivist approaches emphasizing technocratic solutions. In 2023, the Tilburg University Liberal Arts and Sciences program introduced a new minor program on Sustainability, available to all third year bachelor students at Tilburg University. Taking political ecology as its starting point, the minor critically engages with sustainability: questioning assumptions and mainstream narratives, reframing debates, and exploring transformative solutions. Participating students come from a range of academic backgrounds, including law, economics, psychology, and sociology. Drawing on narrative interviews with students who followed the minor program, along with a systematic review of the epistemological characteristics of broader sustainability education at Tilburg University, this paper explores the transformative potential of political ecology education for a diverse cohort of students. Students describe how the minor has had a transformative impact, deepening their critical thinking skills and shifting their perspectives on sustainability. Juxtaposing the minor program against broader sustainability education at Tilburg University, this paper argues that if universities are committed to sustainable societies, political ecology should play a significant role in education, both in its own right and as an important pillar of interdisciplinary education.
Presentation short abstract
Political ecology remains absent from education. This research introduces deliberative pedagogy to 378 students examining a local environmental controversy, demonstrating how citizenship deliberation must start in education to enable intergenerational environmental governance.
Presentation long abstract
Political ecology reveals how power shapes environmental narratives but this is largely unstudied in UK education. Amid a global polycrisis including the climate and environmental emergency and declining democratic trust, John Dewey's insight that "democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife" becomes urgent.
Young people are excluded from consequential civic and environmental decision-making, despite their human right to participate (UNCRC, 1989). Over their whole schooling, the English curriculum provides under 10 hours of mostly fact-based climate change knowledge (Tannock, 2020). This paper demonstrates how political ecology frameworks can be translated into classroom practice to support young people as critical citizens on complex environmental narratives.
Drawing on research in Cumbria, England, this paper presents experimental practice grounded in political ecology of education. Despite a decade-long controversy over a proposed local coal mine, 84% of 378 students (aged 11-14) across five schools were unaware of this development, learning about community issues through informal networks that perpetuate inequality.
I introduced deliberative pedagogy informed by citizens' assemblies, using Dryzek's environmental discourses to enable students to examine six competing narratives and whose interests each serves. Students deliberated competing values relating to economic development, job opportunities, energy security, heritage, the local environment and climate change.
Beyond knowledge mastery, political ecology in education develops skills foundational to equitable sustainability transitions. Alongside my JUST Centre research examining democratic, place-based innovations in Cumbria, this calls for citizenship deliberation that starts in education and is invited into the intergenerational conversation needed on environmental governance.
Presentation short abstract
This paper examines how Sokola Rimba, a community-based education initiative among the indigenous Orang Rimba in Jambi, transforms literacy into advocacy, turning learning into resistance and ecological awareness amid development and conservation pressures.
Presentation long abstract
Since the 1970s, development and conservation projects in Jambi have transformed the living spaces of the Orang Rimba, an indigenous hunter-gatherer group whose livelihood and cosmology are deeply rooted in the forest. Much of their ancestral forest was converted into transmigrant settlements and oil palm plantations, while the remaining area was designated as a national park without their consent, threatening them with relocation. An alternative education initiative called Sokola Rimba (jungle school), developed collaboratively by the Sokola Institute and the Orang Rimba, emerged to address these challenges.
This paper situates the Orang Rimba’s struggle within a political ecology framework to explore how education becomes a medium of resistance and knowledge production. Learning begins with basic literacy and numeracy, evolving into a process of understanding ecological change and the power relations that shape it. Grounded in ethnographic engagement, Sokola teachers live with the community, use local languages and contextual vocabularies, and frame education from the Orang Rimba’s perspective.
Drawing on more than two decades of Sokola Rimba’s praxis, this paper offers an analytical reflection on how contextual education can foster critical consciousness and collective action. It demonstrates how learning practices rooted in everyday forest life enable indigenous hunter-gatherers to defend their rights to their living spaces, sustain local knowledge, and preserve ecological relations amid ongoing development and conservation pressures.
Presentation short abstract
The critical framework suggests education that could offer students hope, knowledge, and skills to critically examine, discuss, choose and work for aims, visions and strategies of solidarity, earth care, and good life for all today and in the future. Central elements draw from political ecology.
Presentation long abstract
At schools, colleges and universities in most countries, new generations have for a long time heard about sustainable development. What we may call the first wave, started with the report ‘Our Common Future’ almost forty years ago, while the second wave, centering around the SDGs, is still on-going. Both waves have been dominated by neoliberal thinking and more specifically ecomodernism, and when sustainable development has entered classrooms and auditoria, these have tended to provide invisible frames.
Today it is reasonable to say that we are moving into times of post-sustainable development. The delimitations of the SDG approach are getting more obvious, and at the same time much political focus shifts towards crises seen in need of more immediate attention.
Meanwhile, many youths express tiredness about the sustainable development education they are offered, and there is frustration about being taught to be individually responsible, although without being exposed to education that they would need for understanding and addressing the maldevelopment.
In this paper, I suggest a critical framework for post-sustainable development education that can provide students with hope, knowledge, and skills for critically examining, discussing, choosing, and working for aims, visions and strategies of solidarity, earth care, and good life for all today and in the future.
The framework draws on several critical social science fields in contrast to the economist and ecomodernism framing of sustainable development. Inputs from political ecology are central, and these will be emphasized in the presentation at POLLEN 2026.
Presentation short abstract
Climate change in Ethiopian secondary textbooks is framed mainly through global science, with little local or indigenous knowledge. A content analysis shows limited contextual relevance, highlighting the need to better integrate indigenous knowledge.
Presentation long abstract
Textbooks are the primary source of scientific concepts with structured knowledge for students. Teachers also rely heavily on textbooks to guide classroom instruction. Given their key role on students’ understanding of environmental issues, we conducted a content analysis to study representations of climate change and local/indigenous knowledge in Ethiopian secondary school Biology and Geography textbooks. Six textbooks four in Geography and two in Biology were selected for analysis. We examined how climate change problems, causes, and solutions are portrayed, with particular attention to their integration with local knowledge, using the theoretical frameworks of green governmentality, ecological modernization, civic environmentalism, and the political ecology of education. Given that effective climate education depends on contextually relevant climate literacy, the meaningful integration of local knowledge is essential for connecting scientific concepts to students’ lived experiences. However, the results show that climate change problems, causes, and solutions are primarily framed through global scientific perspectives, with limited incorporation of local or indigenous knowledge systems. Despite varying depth across grade levels, these dynamics are presented in a way that lacks connection to local practices and fails to foster contextually relevant climate literacy. We recommend a revising of Ethiopian textbooks to integrate indigenous knowledge, foster culturally grounded learning, and empower students as active agents in tackling climate change.
Presentation short abstract
This presentation argues that, given the complex and political nature of environmental challenges, environmental education must draw on perspectives from both political ecology and the tradition of powerful knowledge.
Presentation long abstract
This presentation argues that, given the complex and political nature of environmental challenges, environmental education must draw on perspectives from both political ecology and the tradition of powerful knowledge. Environmental problems are inherently political because any attempt to address them can have consequences for people’s lives and everyday routines, potentially creating winners and losers. At the same time, managing these problems requires engagement with knowledge about natural and social processes, making it crucial to understand how environmental knowledge is produced. The political character of environmental governance, with its production of winners and losers, means that knowledge can never be entirely neutral. Therefore, in this post, I will argue for the importance of combining political ecology and powerful knowledge in environmental education.
Often environmental education (EE)/ education for sustainable development (ESD) ends up at a idealistic and moralistic level not concerning the contradiction and conflicts both at the material and discussive levels in society more alienate than engaged learners. To get a deeper ESD in contradiction of a shallow ESD, the use of political ecology thinking and taking knowledge serous as in Powerful Knowledge is needed.
Presentation short abstract
We review more than 150 climate education resources available online in English and Spanish for secondary and high school students and analyze them through the lens of critical environmental education, political ecology and environmental justice.
Presentation long abstract
In 1992, when the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro officially recognized the need for reorienting education systems to address sustainable development issues, Canadian critical environmental education scholar Bob Jickling published a contested article in the field titled “Why I don’t want my children to be educated for sustainable development”. He basically problematized the celebrated concept of sustainable development and argued that educating for a predetermined objective is against the spirit of education, which must provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary for the development of autonomous and critical thinking so they can realize, understand and engage wisely in debates between anthropocentric and ecocentric worldviews and their corresponding practical approaches. Nowadays, in times of climate emergency and increased social complexity, when education has been identified as one of the key action points for promoting climate change mitigation and adaptation, how climate education adopts such a critical pedagogical perspective and engages with justice and power issues remains a relevant question. We review more than 150 climate education resources available online in English and Spanish for secondary and high school students and analyze them through the lens of critical environmental education, political ecology and environmental justice. In general, the reviewed climate education resources, particularly those addressing specific climate change risks and developed by governmental agencies and private companies, do not adequately address the social injustices associated with such climatic events and fail to reflect on how power relationships and political-economic processes mediate mitigation and adaptation responses.
Presentation short abstract
We present Critical Climate Education as a political ecology research agenda focusing on critically examining discourses, agency, and affect in educational struggles over climate justice, grounded in cases from Norway, Catalonia and Colombia, and aligned with calls for critical climate education.
Presentation long abstract
Building on calls to interrogate how schooling reproduces or contests socio-environmental inequalities (Meek & Lloro-Bidart, 2017; Rahm & Brandt, 2016) and echoing arguments for critical climate education as central to fast and just transitions (Svarstad et al., 2023), this presentation advances a research programme that situates education within climate justice struggles. We examine how schooling sustains dominant socio-ecological orders while also hosting counter-practices capable of positioning students and educators as historical actors (Gutiérrez et al., 2019).
The programme articulates three lines. First, a critical discourse analytical strand traces how school policies and practices generate depoliticising imaginaries and responsibilisation narratives rather than relational, justice-oriented citizenship (Hultberg, Jornet & Sæther, in progress). Second, drawing on cultural-historical work on agency and voice (Jornet & Rajala, 2025), we investigate pedagogies that position youth and educators as actors actively reworking socio-ecological relations. Third, we reconceptualise affect as collectively produced, historically situated and materially consequential—examining how relations such as hope, anxiety and care are woven into institutional life, shaping agency and the reproduction of unjust socio-ecological orders (Røkenes & Jornet, 2025; Guarrasi & Jornet, 2025).
These strands are grounded in empirical cases: a Norwegian school’s enactment of policies casting students as “change makers”; teachers in Catalonia resisting housing dispossession affecting students, illustrating education as urban environmental justice struggle; and post-conflict Colombian peace-building confronting extractivism, insecurity and contested territorial futures. Together, the programme conceptualises schooling as a political-ecological terrain in which discourse, socio-material conditions and affective configurations shape capacities for climate justice.