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Ref: 3.1 Title Framing Student Participation in Education for Sustainable Development

Abstract The notion of participation is used with considerably different meanings in educational approaches to health, citizenship, environmental or sustainability education. This carries with it the danger of arbitrariness and blurring its conceptual contours that could impair the term’s analytical usefulness. The paper addresses this pitfall and provides an introduction to the debate. It offers a cursory review of different normative and analytical perspectives on participation in ESD and integrates commonly addressed themes into a heuristic that seeks to assist with the practical development of and scholarly research on participatory approaches to education for sustainable development and consumer education.

Country Germany

Author Details AUTHOR Title of author MA Surname FISCHER First Name Daniel Name of Institution Leuphana University Lüneburg, Institute for Environmental and Sustainability Communication (INFU) Address of Institution Scharnhorststr. 1, 21335 Lüneburg, Germany E-mail address of author [email protected] Author biography Daniel Fischer was educated and trained as a school teacher, holds a Master’s degree in Education Management and School Development. His doctoral research is at the intersection of the fields of education for sustainable development, sustainable consumption and sustainable school development and school/university culture.

Category Consumer Education Sustainable Development

Theme Environment Health promotion Sustainable consumption

Type of Contribution Discussion paper Daniel Fischer [email protected]

Framing Student Participation in Education for Sustainable Development

Daniel Fischer Introduction Participation has been a “buzzword” (Læssøe, 2010: 42) in debates on education for sustainable development (ESD) from the very beginning. In Agenda 21, chapter 25 dealing with children and youth in sustainable development sets out with the statement that the “involvement of today's youth in environment and development decision-making and in the implementation of programmes is critical to the long-term success of Agenda 21” (UNCED, 1993: 25.1) and that it is “imperative that youth from all parts of the world participate actively in all relevant levels of decision- making processes” (ibid.: 25.2). UNESCO’s International Implementation Scheme for the world decade even goes so far as to say that ESD is characterised by its use of “a variety of pedagogical techniques that promote participatory learning” (UNESCO, 2005: 31).

Given the prominent role that participation plays in the policy discourse on (E)SD, it is commented that the “postulate of participation does not lack advocacy; the problem is rather in systematizing the plurality of voices” (Oser & Biedermann, 2006: 19, translated by author). In the scholarly literature, some unease is expressed with respect to “persisting gaps between a rhetoric of democracy and its practice in education” (Reid et al., 2008a: 3). In particular, a number of approaches to ESD are criticized for having “been built on naïve understandings” (ibid.) of participation and for their „tendencies toward idealisation and Romantic black and white contrasts“ (Læssøe, 2010: 41). In response to this, some recent contributions to the debate have sought to reflect on the notion of participation in ESD (eg. Reid et al., 2008b, Simovska & Jensen, 2009, Læssøe, 2010).

The aim of this paper is to sketch this debate and to therewith contribute to disentangling the concept of participation for the promotion of sustainable development in and through education with a special focus on consumption. This is pursued in three main steps. Chapter 1 presents a brief overview of different

22/04/2018 1 Daniel Fischer [email protected] normative perspectives and voices in the debate concerning the potential roles that participation can or should play in the context of ESD. Chapter 2 focuses on analytical perspectives on how participation in ESD can be conceptualized. Chapter 3 seeks to integrate those perspectives into a heuristic for student participation in ESD that both practitioners and scholars can use to plan and analyze participatory ESD activities more thoroughly.

Acknowledging the diverse roots of ESD, this paper draws on literature from different “adjectival educations” (McKeown & Hopkins, 2007: 20) that all address consumption issues from their respective perspectives, namely environmental education, citizenship education and health education.

What For? Pros and Cons of Participation in ESD Broadly speaking, two camps of viewpoints on participation in ESD can be distinguished: advocates on the one hand and sceptics on the other.

The first camp of participation advocators argues that there are normative, substantive and instrumental reasons for the active involvement of students (Blackstock, Kelly, & Horsey, 2007). Normative or “morality” (Schnack, 2008) arguments refer to the assumption that schools and universities differ to other forms of organizations with respect to the moral proposition that apply to educational settings. Such propositions refer to the legitimacy of educational purposes. In a humanistic perspective, educational efforts seeking to contribute to Bildung as an end in itself must comply with the three constitutive principles of self-determination, participation in decision-making (co- determination) and solidarity (Klafki, 2002). All efforts that tend to impose norms, values and behavioural expectations on students without involving them in the selection of and discussion on these issues are rejected as an illegitimate act of overpowering students and young learners (Sterling, 2011). Rather substantive arguments refer to the Agenda 21 that empathically stressed that sustainable development and sustainable consumption are ‘moving targets’ and no fixed concepts. While key principles inherent in the idea of sustainability can be identified, these need to be specified depending on a distinct historical socio-cultural context (Fischer et al., 2011). Agenda 21 argues that these specification cannot be

22/04/2018 2 Daniel Fischer [email protected] prescribed, but rely heavily on broad public participation and the involvement of stakeholders to be collectively negotiated, specified and interpreted. Approaches to educating about sustainable consumption must thus refrain from imposing finite ideas of what sustainable consumption is onto the recipients. Instead, efforts should concentrate on raising consumption from practical to discursive consciousness (Giddens, 2008) and engage students in processes of collective learning that allow for a communicative approximation to what sustainable consumption could mean in the contexts of their lifeworlds (Fischer, 2010). Finally, a rather instrumental or functional argument for a participatory approach refers to practical experiences and empirical evidence in the context of organizational and school development as well as intervention planning (Matthies & Krömker, 2000). These suggest that the active involvement of students in educational activities increases their commitment to the intended cause of the project. Obviously, instrumental and normative arguments for participation do not necessarily comply with each other. While the former refers to participation as a means to achieve certain outcomes, the latter considers participation an end in itself “inasmuch as empowerment is viewed as a necessary outcome” (Parfitt, 2004: 537). Clearly, as

PARFITT argues, this means/end ambiguity “becomes contradictory when emphasis is laid on participation as a means at the expense of participation as an end” (2004: 537).

While the first camp of advocators stresses the opportunities that participation offers to the educational agenda, the second camp of sceptics points to the dangers and risks in practicing participation unreflectively. It is argued that “participation became (at least partially) an object of celebration, trapped in a reductionist discourse of novelty, detached from the reception of its audiences and decontextualized from its political- ideological, communicative-cultural and communicative-structural contexts“ (Carpentier, 2009). A prominent culmination of criticism of the notion of participation (stemming from the field of development studies) was the book “Participation – The

New Tyranny” by BILL COOKE and UMA KOTHARI. In the book, the editors criticize the notion of participation for exerting a tyranny as it overrides existing and legitimate decision-making structures, promotes group-dynamics that tend to reproduce the interests of the powerful and of local elites, and through its fetishism of methods that leads project managers to implement participation as an instrument legitimizing their own project rather than as an overarching principle genuinely orienting and shaping 22/04/2018 3 Daniel Fischer [email protected] interaction processes (Cooke & Kothari, 2001, after Korf, 2005). A number of examples in COOKE and KOTHARI’s book illustrate malevolent effects of participation processes that openly conflict their aspired outcomes. With respect to ESD practices, it is argued that participatory approaches that do not adequately reflect the socio- historic context and the participation discourses that they root in „risk conveying a collective simulation of sustainable development rather than a critical and creative problem-solving process“ (Læssøe, 2010: 54). In order to avert that danger, LÆSSØE suggests to focus on „dilemmas, dissensus and deliberative communication“ (ibid.).

What Kind? Analytical Perspectives on Participation in ESD It would be an incommensurable task to review the abounding variety of proposed definitions for participation in education here. As a starting point, it seems feasible to view participation independently from educational contexts as “processes in which individuals take part in decision-making that affects them“ (Wandersman 1981, cited in Blackstock et al., 2007: 728) or as “all forms of exerted influence on the genesis of collectively binding agreements by people that are technically not entrusted with such tasks” (Renn, 2005: 227, translated by the author).

Inherent in both definitions is the central role of decision-making and of power relations. According to DOUGLAH (1970), these reflect what he calls quantitative and qualitative dimensions of participation. In quantitative terms, there are two indicators for participation structures: first, the number of matters collectively decided upon, and, second, the questions of which (groups of) actors are granted which participation rights. In qualitative terms, participation is not a categorical characteristic (participatory vs. non-participatory), but rather a gradual phenomenon with different degrees of participation. A well-known metaphor to describe this spectrum ranging from merely informing and consulting stakeholders to granting them full ownership over decision-making was the ladder of participation that was originally introduced by SHERRY ARNSTEIN referring to citizen participation (Arnstein, 1969) and later adopted and reworked by ROGER A. HART for children’s participation (Hart, 2008)

(see figure 1). Both authors distinguish non-participation (steps 1 and 2 in ARNSTEIN’s ladder and steps 1 to 3 in HART’s ladder) from different degrees of participation (steps

4 to 8 in HART’s ladder) that are further divided into different degrees of tokenism

(steps 3 to 5) and citizen power (6 to 8) in ARNSTEIN’s ladder.

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Figure 1: Juxtaposing HART’s Ladder of Children’s Participation (2008) and ARNSTEIN’s Ladder of Citizen Participation (1969)

Another prominent analytical lens is the distinction made in health education between genuine and token participation (Simovska, 2004, Simovska, 2008) that manifests in the focus, outcomes and the targets of participatory educational activities:

“In contrast to token participation, which is focused solely on health information and on individual health and behavior outcomes which are predetermined by experts, genuine participation encourages development of personal meanings and joint construction of knowledge, divergent, educational outcomes and targets individuals inseparable from their living environments”. (Simovska, 2007: 866)

The point that the distinction between token and genuine participation makes is that student ought to have ownership of both “the content and the process of their learning” (ibid.). OSER and BIEDERMANN (2006) emphasize that such ownership presupposes responsibility. They advance the view that the debate on participation overemphasizes entitlement at the expense of responsibility. The latter entails not only the intention of students to take responsibility for the actions to be decided upon, but

also implies that the students have the knowledge about which causes are likely to result from these actions. Hence, from a rather pedagogical perspective, processes of “ensuring participation and of enabling students to participate need to be distinguished and related” (Di Giulio & Künzli, 2006: 215, translated by author) to each other, as one can clearly not go without the other for participation processes to

be effective. Consequently, OSER and BIEDERMANN (2006) refer to processes that lack either or both aspects as pseudo-participation. Another prerequisite apart from knowledge about the issue at stake is that participants in participation processes are able to reflect on what their interests are, know how these can be pursued and express

what they need. GETHMANN (2005) claims that this “own competence assumption” (p. 33) is often taken for granted, while particularly in an educational context this might be in fact an assumption that needs to be critically revised.

In light of these pitfalls, REID and NIKEL (2008) argue that a critical perspective is needed to reflect on understandings of participation in environmental learning. They propose a list of ‘principal organising questions’ (POQ) that can help to identify, compare and systematise different conceptions of participation according to their responses to these questions. They organise these questions on the three levels practice, theory and meta-theory (see table 1).

Practice level Participation in what? How is participation happening already? How important is the participants' participation within the complete process? What are the criteria for being a participant? How is the process of decision-making organised? What is the participants' view on the role of their participation within the process of environment-related learning? Theory level What construction or understanding of democracy underlies the decision-making process? What is the basic structure of the conceptualisation of the participation? How will/might participation happen? How is the participation justified, if at all? (criteria for legitimacy) Meta-theoretical Who defines what we call participation? Who/what is implicated in participating? What is the degree of freedom the participant level has to participate? Who is not participating and why not? How would you recognise a group of people participating here? Whose (rather than what) reality counts in the process of participation? Table 1: Principal organising questions and participation (taken from Reid & Nikel, 2008: 49f.)

A similar list of criteria comprising the formal jurisdiction of participants, participants’ responsibility for risks, participants’ competences to contribute to the issue at stake, the hierarchy of participants, configuration and distribution of (special) roles, information flows, the legitimacy of participants and initiative in the participation process was proposed by OSER and BIEDERMANN (2006). Above all, they consider it of crucial importance that proponents of a participation process clarify the discriminatory effect and specify in how far the results of such process make a difference to those from status-quo non-participation processes.

The questions who participates toward what end and in what spheres are three of five key questions that GARY ANDERSON raised in a well-known paper on authentic participation (Anderson, 1998). The two other questions concern the conditions for participation on the micro and macro level. With regard to the initiation of participation processes, a conventional distinction is made between (claimed) bottom- up participation and (granted) top-down participation (Læssøe, 2008). According to

OSER and BIEDERMANN (2006), this distinction is of great importance for educational purposes and the emergence of citizenship. They argue that those participating in participation processes can only develop an ethos of responsibility when they had to fight for increasing their participation opportunities against great odds. In their view, an awareness of restricted realms of influence and ownership is an indispensable prerequisite for claiming participation opportunities and actively taking over influence and ownership.

Synthesis: Framing Student Participation in ESD

What can scholars and practitioners in the field of education for sustainable development and consumer education learn from the foregoing review? A rather self- evident conclusion could be, as ALTHOFF (2008) succinctly comments, that participation as such can be neither condemned as a covert and specious instrument protecting existing regimes, nor can it be considered as a procedure that ensures ownership and co-determination in decision-making processes per se. While this might sound trivial, it points to an important aspect for researching and practicing participation in ESD: that is, to investigate into procedural and contextual factors of participation using a comprehensive set of criteria

Summing up the cursorily reviewed contributions to the debate, one could argue with

NEWIG (2011) that participation processes can best be viewed as multi-dimensional with three distinctive dimensions: first, the character, direction and intensity of information flows; second, the strength of influence on matters to be decided upon that is granted to the stakeholders; third, the configuration of stakeholders involved. The review stresses the need to complement this focus on procedural factors and participation as a modus operandi with critical analyses of the contextual factors framing such processes. Contextual factors raise questions such as how the processes are legitimised and justified, how and by whom they are initiated (e.g. bottom-up vs. top-down) and what competences they require from their participants (and what offers and efforts are made for people to acquire such competences). A final critical point to

consider is LÆSSØE’s warning of collective self-deception in participatory approaches to ESD. According to an emancipatory approach to ESD (Wals et al., 2008, Schnack, 2008), participatory approaches should contribute to engaging students with specifying what sustainability could mean to them in their local contexts.

Input Process Output What is the justification Who is in charge of the Which results can be for the participation process? (e.g. moderation) genuinely attributed to the process? participation process? Who is generally eligible How is the process of To what degree are to participate for what decision-making participants satisfied with reasons? organised? the results of the participation process? Who is actually How strong is the In how far does the participating for what influence of different process engage students in reasons? participants on the issue at specifying the idea of stake? sustainability? Who initiates the process? How are information flows Who advocates for/against organized? it? What competences are required to participate? What offers are made by whom to whom to acquire them? Table 2: Heuristics of Questions

Table 2 provides a summary of different aspects resulting from the literature review. An input-process-output evaluation model is used to structure different phases of the participation process (similar to the structure used by SIMOVSKA) and to extend the focus on procedural factors to contextual factors. Critical questions (similar to REID and NIKEL’s POQs) that build on aspects that have been elaborated on in the former sections of this paper are compiled for each phase. The table does neither provide a typology, hierarchy or classification of different participation approaches, nor does it attempt to reflect the foregoing aspects in their entity. Rather, it offers a heuristic of critical questions that is informed and can be further refined by the different approaches reviewed before. The purpose of the heuristic is to provide an essential yet feasible set of questions that scholars and practitioners can use as a starting point in their analysis and design of different phases of participation processes in ESD. It will have to prove its usefulness for ESD practice and research.

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