Balancing the urgency and wickedness of sustainability challenges: three maxims for post-normal education

Abstract

In this response article, we explain why sustainability issues are often interpreted as ‘wicked’ or unstructured problems and focus on the consequences for education and societal transformation in view of sustainable development. Drawing on Funtowicz and Ravetz’ (1993) fourfold ‘facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent’ we analyse how the different articles of this special issue tackle the ‘post-normal’ characteristics of sustainability issues. To stimulate the interdisciplinary dialogue and put forward an open concept that can serve as a helpful framework for research collaborations and/on educational practices, we put forward three maxims of ‘post-normal education’ (PNE). Like Funtowicz and Ravetz, who highlighted the specificity of post-normal science, we put the specificity of PNE on the agenda, and more in particular, we stress the need to balance the urgency and the wickedness of sustainability issues.

Keywords:

• Sustainability education
• wicked problems
• urgency
• post-normal science
• post-normal education

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This paper is based on research partially supported by the Scientific Research Network ‘Public Pedagogy and sustainability Challenges’ funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) and by the International Thematic Network SEDwise ‘Sustainability Education – Teaching and learning in the face of wicked socio-ecological problems’ funded by Ghent University.

Notes on contributors

Thomas Block

Thomas Block is director of the Centre for Sustainable Development and lecturer ‘Sustainability and governance’ at the Department of Political Sciences. The identity of his research approach lies in the use of a (nuanced) constructivist epistemology, a complexity-acknowledging perspective, an interpretative policy analysis framework, a participative research design, and in the framing of sustainability issues as ‘political’ matter. His research focus is on complex decision-making and transition governance, education on wicked issues, scenarios and future studies, sustainable cities and urban projects. He is promotor of the International Thematic Network 'Sustainability Education – Teaching and learning in the face of wicked socio-ecological problems' and several inter-university consortia funded by the Flemish Government, e.g. on Sustainability Transitions, Climate Change and Development Cooperation, and ‘Innovation Governance’. He is lecturer-in-charge of three UGent courses: ‘Politics of sustainability’, ‘Sustainable Cities’ and the university-wide elective course 'Sustainability Thinking'.

Gert Goeminne

Gert Goeminne is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Sustainable Development (Ghent University). Holding a PhD in physics (2001), he currently investigates the politics of sustainability from a Science and Technology Studies perspective. His main research interests pertain to the hybrid socio-technical character of sustainability issues such as climate change, thereby investigating how understandings and representations of these problems are inherently linked to the ways in which we choose to address them. As a researcher interested in the epistemological, material and social underpinnings of knowledge production and technological innovation he thus provides a critical foundation for the more specific and practical research on sustainability transitions.

Katrien Van Poeck

Katrien Van Poeck is a post-doctoral researcher at the multi-disciplinary Centre for Sustainable Development of Ghent University (Belgium). She conducts and supervises research projects on experiential learning in the context of urban sustainability transitions and on sustainability in higher education and coordinates two international research networks on environmental and sustainability education (ESE). She has published several journal articles, book chapters and conference papers on ESE in which she empirically analyses practices and policymaking drawing on insights developed in educational theory, political theory and science and technology studies. Her research focuses at the interrelatedness of educational and political processes and challenges and thus addresses questions of democracy, controversy, citizenship and public involvement in the light of sustainability issues. Thereby, she is particularly interested in the relation between research, policy and practice.