Leif Östman
Biographic Data
| ID | 128550 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Leif Östman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Leif |
| FAMILY NAME | Östman |
| SIGNATURE | ÖSTMAN L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Uppsala University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0404-3601 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 152 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Teaching controversial sustainability issues at the junior high-school level: An explorative study of teaching traditions and associations with ways of teaching
Education about controversial sustainability issues is vital for society’s ability to handle problems like climate change in a democratic manner. How teachers educate about these issues should, ideally, be evidence-based. However, teachers’ ideals and attitudes about education also play a role in how they teach. The aim of this questionnaire study with Swedish junior high-school teachers’ (n=378) was to explore whether, and how, different teachin…
Exploring the shifts to existing schooling practices that students experience in open schooling practices
The rhetoric-reality gap is a long-standing debate in environmental and sustainability education (ESE), which exemplifies the barriers that ESE initiatives face due to the contradictory purposes of mainstream schooling and the visions of environmental education. It is known to disrupt the teaching habits of teachers. In this study, we investigated whether students also faced disruptions when they engaged in open-ended problem-solving ESE practice…
Facilitating learning in view of sustainability transitions
This paper presents and illustrates an analytical approach for developing knowledge on facilitating learning processes that can enable sustainability transitions. Theoretically, it combines and integrates inspiration from dramaturgical analysis, transactional pragmatism and didactical theory. It conceptualises the facilitation of learning in terms of scripting, staging and performance and focuses on how a setting and the people acting within/upon…
Anthropocosmism: An Eastern humanist approach to the Anthropocene
This paper addresses the discussion on the Anthropocene in environmental education research.It aims to enrich and widen the debate about the appropriateness of humanist approaches to environmental education and sustainability.In response to criticism about anthropocentric responses to human-made environmental destruction, the authors introduce a version of Eastern humanism: Tu Weiming's 'Anthropocosmism' .This idea of a non-anthropocentric humani…
When teaching habits meet educational innovation: Problematic situations in the implementation of sustainability education through ‘open schooling’
In the face of the global sustainability crisis, schools and teachers are called on to transform education and implement educational innovations to strengthen sustainability education. One of these innovations is ‘open schooling’: educational practices that involve students in identifying, exploring, and tackling real-world sustainability problems in the school environment and the local community. Such – often externally driven – innovations can …
Positioning controversy in environmental and sustainability education
This study delves into the intricate dynamics of controversial issues in environmental education, challenging conventional notions. It explores the relationship between “controversy” and the field of environmental education, elucidating its multifaceted dimensions in and ambitions of teaching practice. In dialogue with previous research and based on our empirical study, we contend that controversy’s existence transcends the mere content of educat…
A transactional methodology for analysing learning
Investigating learning in ongoing classroom practices involves a number of methodological challenges. One main challenge, identified by scholars in sociocultural approaches, is how to take both the individual and the environment into consideration in analyses. Although the challenge we are addressing are methodological in character, the work of coming up with a transactional methodology requires philosophical and theoretical clarifications and he…
Teaching action-oriented knowledge on sustainability issues
Knowledge about sustainability problems as it is typically taught does not per se lead to action for tackling these problems. Environmental and sustainability education researchers have argued for teaching more action-oriented knowledge. This article addresses the ‘didactical work’ required for teachers to do so, both in preparing and implementing lessons. The authors employ transactional didactic theory and the analytical method Practical Episte…
Learning to find a way out of non-sustainable systems
Transactive Teaching in a Time of Climate Crisis
This article discusses three problems that need to be tackled when the climate crisis becomes ‘a sustainability issue’ to be taught in schools. The article highlights, first, how knowledge concerning sustainability in schools risks being reduced and made into knowledge about ‘things’. Secondly, it also discusses how students in such a context risk being treated as instruments for ways of being in the world, rather than being subjects with ethical…
The Risk and Potentiality of Engaging with Sustainability Problems in Education—A Pragmatist Teaching Approach
This article engages in the discussion about education's role in relation to sustainability problems, a debate characterised by a tension between two legitimate concerns: a concern about the instrumentalisation of education, and a concern for the urgent need of widespread engagement and mobilisation for coping with the consequences of severe socio-ecological problems. The authors argue for an approach that takes both concerns seriously. Drawing o…
Opening up the black box of learning-by-doing in sustainability transitions
The political dimension in ESE: The construction of a political moment model for analyzing bodily anchored political emotions in teaching and learning of the political dimension
This article departures from the understanding of environmental sustainable education (ESE) as a political project that consists of dissonant and conflicting voices. The aim of the article is to understand how affection, i.e. bodily sensations, transform into political emotions in teaching and learning settings. The article offers a philosophical and empirically based model called the ‘political moment model’ for analyzing bodily anchored politic…
Crafting sustainability? An explorative study of craft in three countercultures as a learning path for the future
This article explores and seeks to identify what ‘crafting sustainability’ could mean in relation to education for sustainable development (ESD). Certain ESD craft pedagogies are explored in three countercultures (from 1900, 1968 and 2017). The empirical data consists of literature from or about these three countercultures. A broad notion of sustainability and the educational philosophies of perennialism, essentialism, progressivism and reconstru…
Creating space for ‘the political’ in environmental and sustainability education practice: A Political Move Analysis of educators’ actions
Literature about education’s role in realising a more sustainable world emphasises the importance of acknowledging democratic and political challenges in environmental and sustainability education (ESE). This article offers an empirically grounded theoretical and methodological contribution to future research on how ‘the political’ is introduced, handled and experienced in ESE practice. It presents an analytical method, ‘Political Move Analysis’,…
Searching for the political dimension in education for sustainable development: Socially critical, social learning and radical democratic approaches
By means of a narrative research synthesis, the aim of this article is to explore how the political dimension can or should be staged as a teaching and learning content in education for sustainable development (ESD). The study is limited to research literature dealing with the political dimension in relation to the phenomenon of conflict. Three approaches to the topic are identified: a socially critical approach (SCA), a social learning approach …
Education for sustainable development in early childhood education: A review of the research literature
The aim of the study is to describe and analyse research articles relating to the subject of education for sustainable development (ESD) for early childhood education (ECE), published during the years 1996–2013. This is done by answering three specific questions: (1) How is ESD defined by researchers in ECE? (2) What are the major research inquiries and results? (3) What does the research say about young children acting for change in relation to …
The creative use of companion values in environmental education and education for sustainable development: Exploring the educative moment
Our paper addresses the emergence and evolution of values in educational settings. It builds upon and extends earlier work on companion meanings to develop a theory of the creative use of companion values and meanings in education. The recognition of companion values in educational practices highlight epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic transactions that occur in ways we characterize as ‘other than modern.’ Introducing the idea of educative m…
Globalisation and education for sustainable development: Exploring the global in motion
The article explores education for sustainable development (ESD) as a policy concept in different spaces and how it is re-articulated as part of a process of globalisation. The objective is to explore empirically an alternative set of logics in order to conceive of this process of globalisation. With this objective in mind, the article investigates articulations of ESD and sustainable development in Vietnamese and Thai policy-making, and reflects…
I am sailing—towards a transactional analysis of ‘body techniques’
In recent years there has been a growing interest in questions related to embodiment and learning. Within the field of ‘body pedagogics’ great efforts have been made to develop theory and methodology that can deal with the corporeal aspects of experience and knowledge without adopting any form of dualistic conceptions of body/mind and organism/environment. This article connects to this body of research. The purpose is to first present a synthesis…
Globalisation and education for sustainable development: Emancipation from context and meaning
This article tries to contribute to the critical debate on the ideological and globalising potential of education for sustainable development (ESD), which exists in the research field of environmental education, by highlighting potential contradictions in the argumentation for ESD’s ideological and globalising tendency. Further, the authors of this article argue for an alternative perspective on how education policy on ESD can be seen to contribu…
Education for sustainable development and normativity: A transactional analysis of moral meaning‐making and companion meanings in classroom communication
The purpose of the present article is to present and illustrate two different ways of analysing the normativity and discursivity of classroom communication during education for sustainable development (ESD). The two types of analysis can provide important knowledge for discussions of ESD in relation to morals and democracy. Both methods are based on pragmatism and the later works of Wittgenstein. The first approach was developed to examine the re…
Learning as discourse change: A sociocultural mechanism
This paper deals with a theoretical mechanism for learning and a methodological approach for analyzing meaning making in classroom talk and action. It examines the potential of the approach for illuminating learning on a discursive level, i.e., how discourses change and how individuals become participants of new practices. Our approach involves a high‐resolution analysis of how meaningful relations are built in encounters between individuals and …
Opening up the black box of learning-by-doing in sustainability transitions
Education for sustainable development and normativity: A transactional analysis of moral meaning‐making and companion meanings in classroom communication
The purpose of the present article is to present and illustrate two different ways of analysing the normativity and discursivity of classroom communication during education for sustainable development (ESD). The two types of analysis can provide important knowledge for discussions of ESD in relation to morals and democracy. Both methods are based on pragmatism and the later works of Wittgenstein. The first approach was developed to examine the re…
Learning to find a way out of non-sustainable systems
I am sailing—towards a transactional analysis of ‘body techniques’
In recent years there has been a growing interest in questions related to embodiment and learning. Within the field of ‘body pedagogics’ great efforts have been made to develop theory and methodology that can deal with the corporeal aspects of experience and knowledge without adopting any form of dualistic conceptions of body/mind and organism/environment. This article connects to this body of research. The purpose is to first present a synthesis…
The Risk and Potentiality of Engaging with Sustainability Problems in Education—A Pragmatist Teaching Approach
This article engages in the discussion about education's role in relation to sustainability problems, a debate characterised by a tension between two legitimate concerns: a concern about the instrumentalisation of education, and a concern for the urgent need of widespread engagement and mobilisation for coping with the consequences of severe socio-ecological problems. The authors argue for an approach that takes both concerns seriously. Drawing o…
Creating space for ‘the political’ in environmental and sustainability education practice: A Political Move Analysis of educators’ actions
Literature about education’s role in realising a more sustainable world emphasises the importance of acknowledging democratic and political challenges in environmental and sustainability education (ESE). This article offers an empirically grounded theoretical and methodological contribution to future research on how ‘the political’ is introduced, handled and experienced in ESE practice. It presents an analytical method, ‘Political Move Analysis’,…
Searching for the political dimension in education for sustainable development: Socially critical, social learning and radical democratic approaches
By means of a narrative research synthesis, the aim of this article is to explore how the political dimension can or should be staged as a teaching and learning content in education for sustainable development (ESD). The study is limited to research literature dealing with the political dimension in relation to the phenomenon of conflict. Three approaches to the topic are identified: a socially critical approach (SCA), a social learning approach …
Globalisation and education for sustainable development: Emancipation from context and meaning
This article tries to contribute to the critical debate on the ideological and globalising potential of education for sustainable development (ESD), which exists in the research field of environmental education, by highlighting potential contradictions in the argumentation for ESD’s ideological and globalising tendency. Further, the authors of this article argue for an alternative perspective on how education policy on ESD can be seen to contribu…
Teaching action-oriented knowledge on sustainability issues
Knowledge about sustainability problems as it is typically taught does not per se lead to action for tackling these problems. Environmental and sustainability education researchers have argued for teaching more action-oriented knowledge. This article addresses the ‘didactical work’ required for teachers to do so, both in preparing and implementing lessons. The authors employ transactional didactic theory and the analytical method Practical Episte…
The political dimension in ESE: The construction of a political moment model for analyzing bodily anchored political emotions in teaching and learning of the political dimension
This article departures from the understanding of environmental sustainable education (ESE) as a political project that consists of dissonant and conflicting voices. The aim of the article is to understand how affection, i.e. bodily sensations, transform into political emotions in teaching and learning settings. The article offers a philosophical and empirically based model called the ‘political moment model’ for analyzing bodily anchored politic…
The creative use of companion values in environmental education and education for sustainable development: Exploring the educative moment
Our paper addresses the emergence and evolution of values in educational settings. It builds upon and extends earlier work on companion meanings to develop a theory of the creative use of companion values and meanings in education. The recognition of companion values in educational practices highlight epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic transactions that occur in ways we characterize as ‘other than modern.’ Introducing the idea of educative m…
Globalisation and education for sustainable development: Exploring the global in motion
The article explores education for sustainable development (ESD) as a policy concept in different spaces and how it is re-articulated as part of a process of globalisation. The objective is to explore empirically an alternative set of logics in order to conceive of this process of globalisation. With this objective in mind, the article investigates articulations of ESD and sustainable development in Vietnamese and Thai policy-making, and reflects…
Transactive Teaching in a Time of Climate Crisis
This article discusses three problems that need to be tackled when the climate crisis becomes ‘a sustainability issue’ to be taught in schools. The article highlights, first, how knowledge concerning sustainability in schools risks being reduced and made into knowledge about ‘things’. Secondly, it also discusses how students in such a context risk being treated as instruments for ways of being in the world, rather than being subjects with ethical…
When teaching habits meet educational innovation: Problematic situations in the implementation of sustainability education through ‘open schooling’
In the face of the global sustainability crisis, schools and teachers are called on to transform education and implement educational innovations to strengthen sustainability education. One of these innovations is ‘open schooling’: educational practices that involve students in identifying, exploring, and tackling real-world sustainability problems in the school environment and the local community. Such – often externally driven – innovations can …
Positioning controversy in environmental and sustainability education
This study delves into the intricate dynamics of controversial issues in environmental education, challenging conventional notions. It explores the relationship between “controversy” and the field of environmental education, elucidating its multifaceted dimensions in and ambitions of teaching practice. In dialogue with previous research and based on our empirical study, we contend that controversy’s existence transcends the mere content of educat…
Learning as discourse change: A sociocultural mechanism
This paper deals with a theoretical mechanism for learning and a methodological approach for analyzing meaning making in classroom talk and action. It examines the potential of the approach for illuminating learning on a discursive level, i.e., how discourses change and how individuals become participants of new practices. Our approach involves a high‐resolution analysis of how meaningful relations are built in encounters between individuals and …
Education for sustainable development and normativity: A transactional analysis of moral meaning‐making and companion meanings in classroom communication
The purpose of the present article is to present and illustrate two different ways of analysing the normativity and discursivity of classroom communication during education for sustainable development (ESD). The two types of analysis can provide important knowledge for discussions of ESD in relation to morals and democracy. Both methods are based on pragmatism and the later works of Wittgenstein. The first approach was developed to examine the re…
Globalisation and education for sustainable development: Emancipation from context and meaning
This article tries to contribute to the critical debate on the ideological and globalising potential of education for sustainable development (ESD), which exists in the research field of environmental education, by highlighting potential contradictions in the argumentation for ESD’s ideological and globalising tendency. Further, the authors of this article argue for an alternative perspective on how education policy on ESD can be seen to contribu…
I am sailing—towards a transactional analysis of ‘body techniques’
In recent years there has been a growing interest in questions related to embodiment and learning. Within the field of ‘body pedagogics’ great efforts have been made to develop theory and methodology that can deal with the corporeal aspects of experience and knowledge without adopting any form of dualistic conceptions of body/mind and organism/environment. This article connects to this body of research. The purpose is to first present a synthesis…
The creative use of companion values in environmental education and education for sustainable development: Exploring the educative moment
Our paper addresses the emergence and evolution of values in educational settings. It builds upon and extends earlier work on companion meanings to develop a theory of the creative use of companion values and meanings in education. The recognition of companion values in educational practices highlight epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic transactions that occur in ways we characterize as ‘other than modern.’ Introducing the idea of educative m…
Globalisation and education for sustainable development: Exploring the global in motion
The article explores education for sustainable development (ESD) as a policy concept in different spaces and how it is re-articulated as part of a process of globalisation. The objective is to explore empirically an alternative set of logics in order to conceive of this process of globalisation. With this objective in mind, the article investigates articulations of ESD and sustainable development in Vietnamese and Thai policy-making, and reflects…
Education for sustainable development in early childhood education: A review of the research literature
The aim of the study is to describe and analyse research articles relating to the subject of education for sustainable development (ESD) for early childhood education (ECE), published during the years 1996–2013. This is done by answering three specific questions: (1) How is ESD defined by researchers in ECE? (2) What are the major research inquiries and results? (3) What does the research say about young children acting for change in relation to …
Crafting sustainability? An explorative study of craft in three countercultures as a learning path for the future
This article explores and seeks to identify what ‘crafting sustainability’ could mean in relation to education for sustainable development (ESD). Certain ESD craft pedagogies are explored in three countercultures (from 1900, 1968 and 2017). The empirical data consists of literature from or about these three countercultures. A broad notion of sustainability and the educational philosophies of perennialism, essentialism, progressivism and reconstru…
Creating space for ‘the political’ in environmental and sustainability education practice: A Political Move Analysis of educators’ actions
Literature about education’s role in realising a more sustainable world emphasises the importance of acknowledging democratic and political challenges in environmental and sustainability education (ESE). This article offers an empirically grounded theoretical and methodological contribution to future research on how ‘the political’ is introduced, handled and experienced in ESE practice. It presents an analytical method, ‘Political Move Analysis’,…
Searching for the political dimension in education for sustainable development: Socially critical, social learning and radical democratic approaches
By means of a narrative research synthesis, the aim of this article is to explore how the political dimension can or should be staged as a teaching and learning content in education for sustainable development (ESD). The study is limited to research literature dealing with the political dimension in relation to the phenomenon of conflict. Three approaches to the topic are identified: a socially critical approach (SCA), a social learning approach …
The political dimension in ESE: The construction of a political moment model for analyzing bodily anchored political emotions in teaching and learning of the political dimension
This article departures from the understanding of environmental sustainable education (ESE) as a political project that consists of dissonant and conflicting voices. The aim of the article is to understand how affection, i.e. bodily sensations, transform into political emotions in teaching and learning settings. The article offers a philosophical and empirically based model called the ‘political moment model’ for analyzing bodily anchored politic…
Transactive Teaching in a Time of Climate Crisis
This article discusses three problems that need to be tackled when the climate crisis becomes ‘a sustainability issue’ to be taught in schools. The article highlights, first, how knowledge concerning sustainability in schools risks being reduced and made into knowledge about ‘things’. Secondly, it also discusses how students in such a context risk being treated as instruments for ways of being in the world, rather than being subjects with ethical…
The Risk and Potentiality of Engaging with Sustainability Problems in Education—A Pragmatist Teaching Approach
This article engages in the discussion about education's role in relation to sustainability problems, a debate characterised by a tension between two legitimate concerns: a concern about the instrumentalisation of education, and a concern for the urgent need of widespread engagement and mobilisation for coping with the consequences of severe socio-ecological problems. The authors argue for an approach that takes both concerns seriously. Drawing o…
Opening up the black box of learning-by-doing in sustainability transitions
Learning to find a way out of non-sustainable systems
A transactional methodology for analysing learning
Investigating learning in ongoing classroom practices involves a number of methodological challenges. One main challenge, identified by scholars in sociocultural approaches, is how to take both the individual and the environment into consideration in analyses. Although the challenge we are addressing are methodological in character, the work of coming up with a transactional methodology requires philosophical and theoretical clarifications and he…
Teaching action-oriented knowledge on sustainability issues
Knowledge about sustainability problems as it is typically taught does not per se lead to action for tackling these problems. Environmental and sustainability education researchers have argued for teaching more action-oriented knowledge. This article addresses the ‘didactical work’ required for teachers to do so, both in preparing and implementing lessons. The authors employ transactional didactic theory and the analytical method Practical Episte…
Anthropocosmism: An Eastern humanist approach to the Anthropocene
This paper addresses the discussion on the Anthropocene in environmental education research.It aims to enrich and widen the debate about the appropriateness of humanist approaches to environmental education and sustainability.In response to criticism about anthropocentric responses to human-made environmental destruction, the authors introduce a version of Eastern humanism: Tu Weiming's 'Anthropocosmism' .This idea of a non-anthropocentric humani…
When teaching habits meet educational innovation: Problematic situations in the implementation of sustainability education through ‘open schooling’
In the face of the global sustainability crisis, schools and teachers are called on to transform education and implement educational innovations to strengthen sustainability education. One of these innovations is ‘open schooling’: educational practices that involve students in identifying, exploring, and tackling real-world sustainability problems in the school environment and the local community. Such – often externally driven – innovations can …
Positioning controversy in environmental and sustainability education
This study delves into the intricate dynamics of controversial issues in environmental education, challenging conventional notions. It explores the relationship between “controversy” and the field of environmental education, elucidating its multifaceted dimensions in and ambitions of teaching practice. In dialogue with previous research and based on our empirical study, we contend that controversy’s existence transcends the mere content of educat…
Teaching controversial sustainability issues at the junior high-school level: An explorative study of teaching traditions and associations with ways of teaching
Education about controversial sustainability issues is vital for society’s ability to handle problems like climate change in a democratic manner. How teachers educate about these issues should, ideally, be evidence-based. However, teachers’ ideals and attitudes about education also play a role in how they teach. The aim of this questionnaire study with Swedish junior high-school teachers’ (n=378) was to explore whether, and how, different teachin…
Exploring the shifts to existing schooling practices that students experience in open schooling practices
The rhetoric-reality gap is a long-standing debate in environmental and sustainability education (ESE), which exemplifies the barriers that ESE initiatives face due to the contradictory purposes of mainstream schooling and the visions of environmental education. It is known to disrupt the teaching habits of teachers. In this study, we investigated whether students also faced disruptions when they engaged in open-ended problem-solving ESE practice…
Facilitating learning in view of sustainability transitions
This paper presents and illustrates an analytical approach for developing knowledge on facilitating learning processes that can enable sustainability transitions. Theoretically, it combines and integrates inspiration from dramaturgical analysis, transactional pragmatism and didactical theory. It conceptualises the facilitation of learning in terms of scripting, staging and performance and focuses on how a setting and the people acting within/upon…
Sociology (20 works) · Environmental Education and Sustainability (14 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Pedagogy (12 works) · Sustainability (12 works) · Sustainability in Higher Education (11 works) · Environmental education (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Ecology (8 works)