Critical education for sustainable development: exploring the conception of criticality in the context of global and Vietnamese policy discourse

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses how ‘criticality’ is negotiated in the global policy frameworks on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and re-conceptualised in Vietnamese ESD policymaking. Taking the context of Viet Nam, this paper reflects on what constitutes criticality in education in the light of cultural and historical contexts of the education systems. The comparative perspective helps explore whether (1) universal or decontextualised ‘criticality’ exists or (2) whether ‘criticality’ is culturally negotiated based on the premise that educational imaginaries of societal formation and transformation are historically and contextually embedded and contingent. In addition, this paper connects the ongoing debate on the critical potential of ESD within the field of environmental education (EE) research to comparative education research by highlighting both what a comparative perspective might offer to EE research and what recent developments in EE research might contribute to comparative education research.

KEYWORDS:

• Vietnam
• critical thinking
• ESD
• history
• hegemony

Introduction

This paper engages with the academic debate over the ‘radical’ or ‘transformative’ potential of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in the field of environmental education (EE) research and interrogates ESD’s ‘radical potential’ when interpreted in specific cultural and historical contexts. According to a longstanding critique of ESD in the field of EE research, ESD is often portrayed as lacking transformative potential and as serving globalising forces that maintain the neoliberal ‘status quo’ rather than challenging it (Jickling and Wals 2008). The lack of radical potential is often argued on the basis of ESD’s inability to foster criticality (cf. Huckle and Wals 2015). Criticality, however, can be conceived in various ways, drawing on different traditions of thought. Early notions of environmental education that partially came to be integrated into approaches to ESD highlight, for example, that ‘critical’ does not entail an opposition but an interest in analysing underlying structures, conditions, and preconditions (Jensen and Schnack 1997, 168). Similarly, critiques of ESD can take different forms: highlighting flaws in the notion of ‘criticality’ itself (Jickling and Wals 2008); seeking to reinforce criticality by strengthening its theoretical grounding (Huckle and Wals 2015); or calling for the development of practices of critique (Bengtsson 2019). This paper simultaneously writes against and towards a later period in environmental education research: one that interrogates and reflects on earlier critical and constructivist theoretical outlooks (cf., Lotz-Sisitka, Rosenberg, and Ramsarup 2020). This paper partially aligns with recent decolonial reflections on the premises and dangers of engaging with environmental and sustainability education in the field (Tuck, McKenzie, and McCoy 2014) by interrogating how to conceptualise ‘criticality’ without appealing to a universalising notion of ‘criticality’ as the ultimate reference point.

This paper analyses how ‘criticality’ is negotiated in the global policy frameworks and re-conceptualised or neglected in national ESD policymaking. Taking the case of Viet Nam, it reflects on what constitutes ‘criticality’ in education in a non-Western cultural and historical context. The comparative analysis of education policymaking on ESD in Viet Nam in combination with an analysis of criticality in global and Vietnamese policy frameworks provides the starting point for reflection on whether, or to what extent, such a thing as universal or decontextualised ‘criticality’ can (or should) be embraced in education systems everywhere or, conversely, whether (or how far) ‘criticality’ should be conceived as historically and contextually contingent. This paper uses a comparative approach to argue against the appeal to a universal referent for criticality in ESD while trying to open a dialogue on how criticality can be understood in one context and among many contexts. This comparative approach does not intend to account for similarities as interpreted expressions of a shared hegemonic global structure or epistemic matrix of power but does intend to account for socio-historic differences in terms of incompatible hegemonic assumptions about education and critical thinking. Here hegemonic refers to a degree of ideological sedimentation that is relative to a specific socio-historical context that assumes, for example, certain aspects about education (Bengtsson 2014). Comparative education research intends to decolonise as it aims to indirectly account for the existence of different ontological outlooks and related hegemonic outlooks on education. This decolonising can only be achieved indirectly given that what is hegemonic does not surface directly in, for example, policy or teaching but is taken for granted to such a degree that the hegemonic elements are unexamined and seen as the underlying referents of meaning. This paper, however, addresses differences among hegemonic outlooks on education by pointing out differences and incommensurabilities in interpretation of ‘critical thinking’ that can be given meaning when considering different hegemonic assumptions about education. Here, I will examine how critical thinking is conceived differently when relying on the Enlightenment’s appeal to the reasoning subject as primarily individual, on the one hand, and the Confucian notion of critical thinking as primarily directed towards culture and life, on the other hand.

This paper connects the tension between ‘global’ demands and the incommensurability of historical imaginaries of education to recent calls for intellectual decolonisation and epistemic diversity, for example, in UNESCO’s Futures of Education Vision Statement (UNESCO 2020). Therefore, this paper aims to contribute to current debates about the relationship between the decolonisation of epistemic regimes and the politics of engagement with sustainability issues in and through education. The paper concludes with a proposal for rethinking the grounds of criticality in the light of these debates.

The paper’s overall structure moves from consideration of global policy discourse on ESD and the role therein of criticality to a consideration of the national level. This movement from the discussion of criticality in global key policy frameworks on ESD to an interrogation of criticality in the context of Vietnamese education policy and curricula sets the stage for a discussion of how the historicity of educational thought might be understood in terms of shared or distinct spatial/territorial frames of reference. A tension exists between the identification and acknowledgement of cross-national or cross-cultural epistemic differences, or different historic imaginaries of education, and international appeals for ‘solidarity grounded in our common humanity and recognise knowledge as a global common good’ as found in the Future of Education Vision Statement (UNESCO 2020, 3).

Criticality in global ESD frameworks and policy discourse

The global policy frameworks of ESD predominantly conceive criticality in terms of ‘critical thinking’. This was already the case during the formalisation of ESD with the launch of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD 2005–2014), where critical thinking is closely associated with ESD as a key principle. For example, the Framework for the UNDESD International Implementation Scheme (UNESCO 2006, 17) identifies critical thinking as a key characteristic of ESD and links it closely to problem solving. Furthermore, with regards to instructional methodologies, the framework for the UNDESD stresses that instruction must reflect the sense of common concern and commitment and at the same time highlights the need for ‘learner-centred instruction focused on personal engagement with learning and critical assessment of problems and possibility’ (UNESCO 2006, 28). Although the tenets of ‘critical thinking’ are not further elaborated, two main characteristics can be observed. First, critical thinking is related to cognitive engagement with or ‘assessment’ of problems, i.e. it requires or is instigated by a problem. Second, the association of ESD with the learner-centred and learning-focused approaches highlights personal or individual acts of critical thinking rather than collective results of critical thinking. Although not explicitly acknowledged, the underlying conception of criticality in ESD within these first formalisation attempts at ESD through the UNDESD shares similarities with the earlier mentioned first-generation conceptions of ESD and environmental education, which criticise the idea that education is a form of behaviour modification, and calls for greater focus on reflection and democratic forms of education (e.g. Jensen and Schnack 1997).

The follow-up programme to the UNDESD, the Global Action Programme (GAP) on ESD (2014–2019) and its framework, the UNESCO Roadmap for Implementing GAP (UNESCO 2014a, 20), reaffirms the key role of critical thinking in ESD and, again, links critical thinking to learner-centred instruction by associating critical thinking with ‘participatory teaching’, ‘(complex) systems thinking’, ‘collaborative decision making’, and ‘empowerment of learners’. Participatory teaching, collaborative decision making, and empowerment of learners focus on how the subject’s emancipation provides the conditions for critical thinking, allowing learners to emerge as agents who shape teaching and learning trajectories by their free use of reason (Gough 2006). The references to (complex) systems thinking suggest what kind of thinking ‘critical thinking’ entails. In the context of ESD, systems thinking allows for an ecological worldview, based on expansion, connection, and integration in thinking rather than disconnected thinking (Sterling 2003).

Appealing to this focus on connection, I argue that expansion and integration of thinking entails the logical movement of synthesis in thinking. The logic of synthesis entails the combination of different components or arguments and connects them to a whole. Synthesis in thinking is hence the antithesis of analysis or analytic thinking (disconnection), which separates a component or argument into its constituent elements. Yet, critical thinking can be seen as requiring both analytical and synthetic thinking as will become evident once we consider how ‘dialectics’ is related to critical thinking.

The UNDESD Final Report (UNESCO 2014b) elaborates on the relationship between analytical and synthetic thinking by emphasising the value of asking critical questions to clarify one’s own values, thinking systemically, responding through application, and exploring the dialectic between tradition and innovation. The mentioning of dialectics and particularly between tradition and innovation in the final report illuminates a tension between different historically embedded epistemologies and the collective innovation through thinking that was to be brought about during the UNDESD. Thus, the mention of dialectics in this context of envisioning collective innovation invests in a particular notion of synthesis that aligns with the Hegelian tradition of dialectics (Hegel 1816). Dialectics, in this Hegelian sense, is not reduced to the construction of oppositions but involves a synthesis and an overcoming of contradictions or tensions between different positions through synthesis. Although analytical thinking can be seen as yielding incommensurable elements, resulting in contradictions or tensions, dialectic overcomes and integrates these seemingly incommensurable elements by synthesising them to create a new form of knowledge.

UNESCO’s roadmap of learning refers to the context of dialectics – specifically, UNESCO’s consultation with experts in an effort to lend nuance to the conceptions of learning involved in ESD. The expert review (UNESCO 2011, 30) draws on research and field reports from UNDESD to emphasise that the need for critical thinking has always been a key feature of ESD. Critical thinking is described as the examination of the ways learners interpret the world and how knowledge and choices are shaped. Critical thinking is portrayed as ensuring that individuals and groups ‘are able to contribute to sustainability in genuinely autonomous and authentic ways’ (UNESCO 2011, 30). Although the concepts ‘autonomous’ and ‘authentic’ are not explicitly defined, genuine critical thinking is defined as the move beyond criticism of external situations and events towards ‘deep examination of the root causes of unsustainability’ and learners’ recognition of ‘bias and the assumptions underlying their own knowledge, perspectives and opinions’ (UNESCO 2011, 30). Hence, ‘authenticity’ can be read as a reference to the decolonial critique of a particular Western epistemological and ontological model derived from the Cartesian cogito that was put forward during the UNDESD (Lotz-Sisitka 2016).

Thus, criticality in the form of critical thinking features as a key element of ESD in the relevant global policy frameworks. The conception of critical thinking can be seen as somewhat open or ambiguous in UNESCO documents, given the limited space devoted to elaborating the concept as well as the non-technical language used to elaborate it. On the one hand, we might be tempted to critique this open or ambiguous articulation for its lack of critical potential as even neoliberal discourses might be used to articulate critical thinking (Jickling and Wals 2008). Yet, on the other hand, openness or ambiguity can also be seen as a prerequisite for contextual sensitivity in understanding critical thinking. Accordingly, the ambiguity or openness of UNESCO’s global policy framework can be interpreted as a condition of its ability to guide – i.e. its openness and ambiguity are prerequisites for global policy translation and uptake. As the expert review highlights (UNESCO 2011, 38) with regards to the dialectics between tradition and innovation, there is a need for ‘respecting cultural diversity’ and ‘intercultural dialogue’. Hence, the ambiguity and openness of the conception of critical thinking can also be seen as a strategic move that allows for culturally or historically diverse conceptions of critical thinking. That is, ambiguity and openness allow for decolonialisation of the concept of ESD as it is given meaning according to diverse historical and cultural understandings of education.

Although the analysis of the global ESD frameworks and policy discourse surrounding ESD highlights a particular epistemology and predominantly represents the logic underlying conceptions of critical thinking, such analyses often exclude other epistemologies and conceptions of critical thinking. Specifically, these analyses appeal to the Marxist/Hegelian notion of critical thinking as a form of dialectics (dialectical materialism), which forms the core of critical pedagogy (e.g. Apple 2000) as the key referent. Yet, critical thinking as mentioned above remains ‘open’ or contested in these ESD-specific policy discourses as well as broader education policy discourses as neoliberal policy discourse as propagated, for example, by the World Bank (e.g. Molina et al. 2018), can be seen to invest in the concept of ‘critical thinking’. Appeals to critical thinking by the World Bank often draw on a different epistemological framework, one that Marxists would label dialectical idealism, often associated with educational psychology and learning sciences. Here, the focus is on cognitive development and the role of critical thinking as a form of metacognition and ultimately as an instrumental ‘skill’ or ‘competency’ conferring advantages in economic productivity (e.g. Moon 2007).

Yet, and this is a key observation of this paper, while seemingly contradictory, the dialectical and neoliberal notions of critical thinking have some similarities: (a) they promote synthetic thinking; (b) they focus on epistemic individualism; (c) they aspire to transcend surface appearances and grasp some deeper, universal truth. The argument is that these underlying assumptions are commonly appealed to in Western conceptions of ESD to the extent that they are hegemonic, i.e. to the extent they are taken for granted (Bengtsson 2014). Accordingly, I will engage in the comparative approach to the localisation of discussion in the context of Viet Nam to illustrate that alternate underlying assumptions can be drawn on to conceive of criticality in the context of ESD.

Conceptions of critical thinking in Vietnamese education policy and curricula reform

This section aims to ‘localise’ the discussion of criticality and critical thinking in the context of Viet Nam. This localisation of the discussion does not aspire to assess the ‘extent’ to which criticality and critical thinking are part of ESD implementation or policymaking as a form of comparative research that instals a shared referent. Instead, it aims to contextualise and problematise the global discussion of critical thinking to revisit what is often understood as a lack of criticality of ESD or ‘limitations or selective uptake’ of ESD and its key principles at the national level. Thus, this section aims to explore the relationship between contextualisation of ESD and the globally acknowledged need for education to contribute to the transformation of societies.

In an effort to contextualise the influences on the conception of ESD and criticality, I will draw on findings from an earlier analysis by me (Bengtsson 2016) that identified four central discourses. These four discourses draw on policymaking to give meaning to sustainable development in Vietnamese policymaking and include an economist, a globalist, a nationalist, and a socialist discourse. These four discourses allow for different configurations and positions, for example, a globalist-economist position that can be seen as to stand in conflict with a nationalist-socialist position where incommensurabilities among discourses result in paradoxes and contradictions when Sustainable Development, ESD, and the general purposes of education are articulated in Vietnamese policy. Hence, sustainable development and ESD can be seen as concepts that policymakers strategically invest in by drawing on all four discourses, which, however, gives different meaning to these concepts (Bengtsson 2014, 2016).

The state of ESD implementation in Vietnamese education policy was documented during the UNDESD (Bengtsson 2014) as well as the GAP on ESD (Nguyen 2019). ESD has been clearly addressed in the form of specialised position papers by the government (VNCDESD 2010), and early on sustainable development was adopted and adapted to be aligned with existing macro social-economic development plans (GoV 2004). Hence, sustainable development as a policy concept has been well integrated into existing overarching policy frameworks and development plans. I argue that ‘concepts’ and ‘principles’ from global policy frameworks are reappropriated rather than influencers of policymaking in a linear process of ‘uptake’ and alignment to global configurations of meaning (cf., Bengtsson and Östman 2013). By ‘reappropriation’, I mean that policy concepts are given meaning according to existing discursive formations where that engagement with these global policy concepts creates a discursive manifold in relation to that concept where localisation of that concept (e.g. foreign or indigenous) becomes difficult (Bengtsson 2014). In the following paragraphs, this localisation becomes apparent with regards to the concept of ‘awareness raising’ in the context of sustainable development, where Vietnamese policy interprets existing forms of education as ‘propagandisation’.

Accordingly, given ‘reappropriation’ of sustainable concepts, certain socio-economic sustainable development priorities, such as awareness raising and sustainability propaganda, can be seen as integrated and compatible with overarching education policy frameworks (MoET 2011). Efforts to implement SD, such as the joint initiative by the UNESCO office in Viet Nam, the Ministry of Education and Training, and Samsung (among others) (UNESCO Viet Nam 2015), have focused on (1) teacher capacity building, (2) awareness raising in schools, and (3) awareness in the media. Research on such efforts, however, has pointed out a gap between conceptions of ESD at the curriculum/policy level and actual teaching practices at the classroom level (Nguyen 2018, 2019).

An analysis of the key education policy framework, the Education Development Strategic Plan (MoET Viet Nam 2011) between 2011 and 2020, as well as the National Action Plan for ESD (VNCDESD 2010) highlight a lack of any references to critical thinking when discussing education reform in general or the implementation of ESD in particular. Although critical thinking is not discussed, ‘creative thinking’ is identified by the Education Law of 2005 (NatAss 2005) Article 5, as a requirement of the contents and methods of education. Education reform and the emphasis on fostering creative thinking as part of a ‘modernisation of the education system’ is represented as closely aligned with a shift from teacher-focused instruction to a learner-centred approach. This emphasis aligns with the emphasis on adaptation of international standards in the globalist and the economist discourses of a shift in economy towards a knowledge-based economy. Learners are to actively engage in learning and creation of knowledge, often coupled with the requirement to apply learned knowledge in ‘real’ situations. This push at the policy level to move from a traditionally teacher-focused to a student-focused approach, however, is often not reflected in practice, given the widespread confusion among educators over the definition of student-centred learning and deep-rooted educational traditions that emphasise the authority of teachers (Nguyen and Hall 2017). In this instance, a clash between the economist/globalist position and the nationalist/socialist position resurfaces in the conception of education, where the international standard of ‘student-centered’ teaching undermines ideological and hegemonic notions of authority and education that often are drawn on in nationalist and socialist discourses.

In the context of the embrace of ‘creativity’ and ‘modernisation’, I posit that there are certain tensions in Vietnamese education policymaking around the shift towards learner- and student-focused teaching. As I have argued in my analysis of Vietnamese education and sustainability (Bengtsson 2014, 2016), education and curricular reform reflect tensions between these two central discourses in socio-economic policymaking. For example, the market-economic discourse frames education reform in terms of a need to adapt to international standards and principles, whereas the socialist-oriented discourse insists on the need of education to ensure the preservation of national identity. Tensions surface indirectly through paradoxes in argumentation or in the identified need of education to assure the ‘harmonisation of development’ or reconciliation between conceptions of development according to a market economy discourse and a socialist (or, in effect, a state-centred nationalist) discourse. In the Vietnamese context, creative thinking and student-focused learning are associated with efforts to enhance the efficiency and productivity of the market economy, especially through promoting ‘innovation’ in ‘knowledge’ industries. Learner-centred and creative thinking are valued for their perceived capacity to promote integration with the global economy in line with the Vietnamese state’s developmental goals; that is, ‘creativity’ or autonomous thinking on political matters is not entertained in official discourse (NatAss 2005).

The preamble of the latest general MoET curriculum makes the following observation:

In order to ensure sustainable development, many countries have continually renovated education to improve the quality of human resources, equip future generations with solid cultural backgrounds and high adaptability to all natural and social variables and dynamics. (2018, 3)

Sustainable development is, accordingly, assured when ‘socialism’ ameliorates the excesses of the market economy. Furthermore, ‘socialism’ is closely aligned with nationalism as it emphasises national unity, sovereignty and social cohesion. This vision of nationalist market ‘socialism’ is elaborated most extensively in the subjects of civic education and ‘national defence and security education’ in the Vietnamese school curriculum. Here the emphasis is on instilling values of family, community, and nation, abiding by prescribed ethical standards, and defending and developing national traditions (MoET 2018, 24f).

The harmonising function discussed above is, in the socialist and nationalist discourses, ‘reappropriating’ the alignment of education policy towards international integration. This ‘reappropriation’ can also be viewed as a realignment of ‘creative thinking’, where the curriculum invokes (e.g. in relation to arts education and music education) ‘creativity’ to preserve and promote traditional cultural values in the process of integration and exchange with the world (MoET Viet Nam 2018, 25f). Hence, the role or alignment of ‘creativity’ and ‘creative thinking’ in Vietnamese education policy and curricula becomes overdetermined as it is doubly articulated in relation to the contradictory discourses. The need for a harmonising function highlights the contradictions, tensions and incommensurabilities that education policy expresses when seemingly drawing on discourses that account for specific socio-historical positions in Viet Nam. Education, ESD in particular, is portrayed as a way to harmonise and ease tensions, render compatibility between different policy ambitions, and sublate a state of intra-national and international development. Contradictions in policymaking point out this overdetermination and that education policy engagement can be described as a hegemonic investment into particular positions rather than expressions of a determinable state of hegemony where tensions and contradictions would be temporary exceptions of a universal state (Bengtsson 2016). Accordingly, I see the tensions in the harmonising function of ESD as relating to both conflicts arising from the ways socio-historical approaches give meaning to education and conflicts arising from ‘international’ borrowing of policy concepts that attain specific meanings when articulated in that specific socio-historical context.

However, other research on the implementation of ESD in Viet Nam that compares policy discourse and teaching practice points out the incommensurability between ESD as a foreign, transformative, constructivist, and learner-centred approach and prevalent national teaching practices focused on knowledge-reproduction and teacher-centredness (Nguyen, Leder, and Schruefer 2021). Nguyen, Leder and Schruefer (2021, 331) argue that ESD fundamentally challenges the pedagogic practice of reproducing knowledge by looking at geography education in Viet Nam to show how ESD subverts cultural values, norms and constructions of teaching and learning contexts. The authors can be viewed as creating a dialectical relationship between ESD and the heritage of Confucianism and feudalism in teaching practices in Viet Nam by portraying them as two incommensurable positions. Addressing the dialectic between tradition and innovation, the authors ask the following question: ‘How can ESD reflect existing cultural values in the country?’ (Nguyen, Leder, and Schruefer 2021, 331f). Here, the authors are suggesting a certain contradiction that is difficult, if not impossible, to overcome given the assumed alignment of ESD with student-centred learning and the heritage of cultural values embracing teacher-centred instruction. The analysis of critical thinking in global policy frameworks for ESD seems to substantiate this identified contradiction or blockage if we assume that critical thinking privileges autonomous, individual thinking.

If we return to the objective of this paper, the analysis of how ‘criticality’ is re-conceptualised or neglected in national ESD policymaking, it might be concluded that ‘critical thinking’ is neglected as critical thinking per se is not mentioned in the analysed documents. Hence, we might jump to the conclusion that criticality does not surface in Vietnamese education policy or curriculum reform. My underlying analytical framework suggests that criticality might not be ‘appropriated’ given an incompatibility between ‘Western’ student-focused and individualistic notions of education and ‘Vietnamese’ hegemonic notion of education that is teacher and community focused. However, I would like to problematise a universalising step where a particular notion of ‘critical thinking’ that focuses on the individual subject’s cognitive ability to engage in analysis and synthesis stands in as a universal referent for what critical thinking is and whether education is judged by its ability to fostering such criticality. Furthermore, as I indicated, not all ‘critical thinking’ might be fostering criticality, so we might ask ourselves whether criticality as a concept is explicitly labelled in policy or teaching practice. Once we leave the idea of a universal referent of criticality aside and reflect on what constitutes criticality in the Vietnamese cultural and educational context, we might hesitate to fully embrace this longing for a universal normative referent, given, as I argue, that this might be relying on the imposition of a particular ontological and epistemic outlook.

As I have emphasised, creative thinking is highlighted in Vietnamese education reform discourse but is defined in at least two contradictory ways. Creativity with regards to arts education is invoked when arguing for the preservation or promotion of traditional cultural values in the process of integration and exchange with the world. If we return to the definition of critical thinking in UNESCO’s expert review of ESD, where critical thinking is associated with the examination of how people’s knowledge and choices are shaped and with their capacity ‘to contribute to sustainability in genuinely autonomous and authentic ways’ (2011, 30), we may conclude that this notion of creativity partially aligns in Vietnamese policymaking with this notion of critical thinking as expressed in UNESCO’s expert review. However, although there is a strong emphasis on (state-defined) cultural authenticity, the Vietnamese policy discourse does not address any association of creativity with autonomy as a key tenet of the (neo-)liberal and dialectical conception of critical thinking.

Thus, returning to Nguyen, Leder and Schruefer’s (2021, 331f) question (‘How can ESD reflect existing cultural values in the country?’), I would like to reframe this question in the context of this paper as: How can we understand ‘transformation’ and ‘criticality’ without a priori imposing a notion of autonomous subjecthood with the agency to transcend context? The question is an invitation to break out of the deadlock between appealing to a ‘limiting’ framing of ESD and ‘criticality’ that results in depicting cultural heritage as problematic, since it does not share the same entry points for framing the transformative or radical potential of education in terms of autonomous subjects transcending their context and history. Hence, the invitation is to rethink what we might mean by critical thinking in ESD and to engage with the ‘strategic’ ambiguity or the decolonising openness of its formulation in global policy frameworks on ESD. The invitation calls for a rethinking of criticality without a priori imposing a particular conception of critical thinking as an ultimate or universal standard, which could be interpreted as a colonialising move.

Rethinking the conception of critical thinking in ESD

In this section, I seek to rethink ‘critical thinking’ to create a space for alternative conceptions that do not assume that critical thinking must be instigated by or confined to an autonomous subject whose thinking can transcend context and history. First, I engage with general conceptions of critical thinking to show how an alternative conception of critical thinking in ESD is at work in the Vietnamese context. My effort is not to counter a depiction of essential characteristics of ESD but to highlight alternative entry points for conceptualising critical thinking in ESD. Yet, a question that will be picked up again, at the end of this section, is the role of ‘transformation’ or the transformative or ‘radical’ aspects of ESD.

To begin, I would like to rethink the necessity or imperative for ESD to be student- or learner-centred. Komatsu, Rappleye, and Silova (2021) make a compelling argument for rethinking the commitment to student-centred learning, highlighting how this imperative is entwined with culturally and historically specific forms or reasons grounded in ontological individualism. Komatsu and colleagues define ontological individualism as assuming individuals as prior to societies and as a primary reality. Ontological individualism has several consequences for thinking about social organisation and education, for example, the assumed autonomy and self-reliance of the individual (Komatsu, Rappleye, and Silova 2021, 2).

Komatsu, Rappleye, and Silova (2021) posit that countries favouring or dominated by ‘ontological individualism’ tend to score lower on a range of social and environmental sustainability indices as well as tend to be characterised by liberal market economies, which they see as detrimental to social and environmental sustainability. However, Vickers (2018) has critiqued their work as ahistorical and culturally essentialising. Although linking ontological individualism with unsustainability may be without contestation, Komatsu and colleagues problematise the unquestioned valorisation of student-centred learning as an expression of ontological individualism in the context of the promotion of education’s contribution to sustainable development, given that promotes thinking that focuses primarily on one’s own experiences, thoughts and future desires even though forms of learning might be taking place in groups or collectives (Komatsu, Rappleye, and Silova 2021, 4).

The above argument challenges Nguyen, Leder, and Schruefer’s (2021) critique of teacher-centred instruction in Viet Nam as emerging from a particular reference point that provides an imperative to highlight the autonomous subject in and through education. It also leads to another question: Is teacher-centred instruction really the constitutive ‘other’ of transformative ESD? Whereas Nguyen, Leder, and Schruefer (2021) associate teacher-centred instruction with a pure form of reproduction in education that maintains the status quo, Komatsu, Rappleye and Silova (2021, 20) argue that understanding teacher-oriented instruction, which can be seen as focused on ‘reproduction’ and ‘traditionalism’, can, once we abandon the frame of ontological individualism, be understood as what I might call ‘radical’. By radical, I refer to a change that affects the fundamental structure of something and therefore relates to the transformative aspect of ESD. Yet, how we understand this radical aspect (e.g. teacher-oriented instruction) might differ significantly from understandings of education based on ontological individualism. Accordingly, I would like to suspend judgement of what true radical or critical ESD is and open up this conception to alternative approaches to radicality/criticality that do not share the foundation of epistemic individualism and the possibility of transcendence through synthetic thinking. Thus, to explore how criticality might be fostered in alternative conceptions of education such as the Vietnamese tradition of teacher-centred ESD, I turn to scholarship on Confucian and Taoist perspectives on education and critical thinking that, as Nguyen, Leder, and Schruefer (2021) argue, are at play in teacher-centred instruction in Vietnam.

Confucian notions of learning and education can be understood as a parallel orientation in education thought in Vietnamese education policymaking and reform, where Confucian heritage is also surfacing in the conception of creative thinking as well as the reluctance of teachers to engage in student-centred instruction and learning. Below, I use Tan’s work on explicating the Confucian notion of thinking (Tan 2015) and critical thinking (Tan 2017) to an international audience of education scholars to consider alternative conceptions of criticality and critical thinking as part of ESD in the Vietnamese context. Although the constraints of a paper do not allow full exploration of these conceptions, a brief explanation can provide entry points for considering alternative readings of Vietnamese education policy once we consider that concepts might have a different connotation.

When the objectives of the Vietnamese general education curriculum speak of comprehensive development of ‘mentality and material, competencies and qualities that are oriented toward family, country, mainly oriented towards the education of family, country, community, necessary routines in study and life’ (MoET Viet Nam 2018, 6), a formulation of comprehensive development can be interpreted to be in line with the Confucian ambition of the development of thinking. According to Tan (2015, 4), thinking or Si does not refer to simple thought processes, as it is an inclusive term that entails a range of processes, such as understanding, reflecting, analysing, synthesising, evaluating, making connections, drawing analogies, making inferences and forming judgements. Tan (2015, 7) explains that learning consists of two phases: the accumulation of the materials of knowledge from direct and indirect experiences and the subsequent reflection or thinking (Si) on that knowledge to synthesise, systematise and integrate them into oneself as wisdom. From this perspective, critical reflection is not breaking with existent knowledge as held by an autonomous subject but breaks from a higher-level form of integration than dialectical synthesis as it does not involve sublation (Aufhebung) to overcome contradictions or tensions between different positions (Hegel 1816). Sublation or Aufhebung involves a cancelation or abolishing of negativity (arising out of contradiction) as well as an upward movement towards ‘absolute knowledge’ as form of atemporal or final knowledge. The Confucian conception of thinking, however, relates thinking and knowledge to living life, where learning and thinking broadens the Way (Dao): ‘realising, perpetuating, and promoting the Way on earth to future generations’ (Tan 2015, 4).

Thinking does not transcend history as in the notion of sublation in the dialectical outlook, but it feeds on internalisation of history through memorisation. Internalisation of history does not break with or move beyond history but brings about history that is broadening the Way through thinking and collective action that engages with history. Hence, teacher-centred instruction can also be seen as promoting the kind of thinking that is ‘radical’, i.e. thinking that is changing the Way. It is in this sense of ‘radical’ that there might also be such a thing as critical thinking in Confucian thought as suggested by Tan (2017). Accordingly, teacher-centred ESD can also be seen as potentially radical and not as a form of reproduction. Thinking (Si) as a range of processes also includes, as mentioned above, the forming of judgement (Li). judgement can be understood as the totality of normative behaviours that are accompanied by corresponding attitudes and values (Tan 2017). Returning to the discussion of creativity in relation to arts education in the Vietnamese general curriculum, seeing it as a process that is inherit and promotes traditional cultural values in the process of integration and exchange with the world, creativity can here be seen to involve judgement. Tan (2017, 334) posits that judgement is involved in rites, roles and relationships where it helps to interpret who and what we are and is flexibly applied to particular situations. To provide further insights into how creativity and creative thinking might be understood by drawing on Confucian notions of judgement, it is useful to outline three key dimensions of critical thinking as judgement as summarised by Tan (2017, 339). First, it entails a spiritual dimension, relating to the use of judgement to broaden the Dao and therefore to a metaphysical end. Second, there is an ethical dimension, as judgement and the effort to broaden the Way entails a clarification of one’s beliefs and values as they are enacted rather than held or appealed to as an abstract ethical set of rules or skills. Third, there is an interpersonal dimension to judgement that does not ground the judgement in the subject (freedom, emancipation and autonomy) but in caring that is not reduced to the individual self but is connected to a general or communal position.

Tan’s work on clarifying Confucian notions of thinking and critical thinking is cited above simply to show that there are alternative readings of curricular discourse in Viet Nam. These alternative entry points can also function as entry points for rethinking ‘teacher-centred’ ESD and how it (or rather its Confucian conceptions of thinking and education) could foster critical thinking. The exploration is not a claim that teacher-centred ESD is critical, as this paper does not engage with the study of the actual practices. Rather, it highlights the alternative conceptions available in the case of Vietnamese policymaking on ESD to conceive of critical thinking in policy and teaching practices that do not necessarily have to be based on the principles of epistemological individualism, synthetic thinking and transcendence of history. In this effort, the aim is not to portray ESD as a reflection of eternal Confucian culture as a true reference point for understanding education in Viet Nam. Curricular and pedagogical practice is not only the product of heritage and ‘culture’ but also the product of active politics as a form of hegemonic articulation, as argued in the analysis of Vietnamese education policy. The history of Vietnam’s Communist state illustrates the significance of the import of discourses and ‘culture’, especially with regards to Marxist-Leninism and its associated appeal to dialectical and synthetic reasoning. In other words, national education systems and their conceptions of education are never sole products of ‘authentic’ culture but are always politically constituted. In other words, they are not culturally determined as the politics of education draws on diverse discourses and epistemic systems to politically construct education in and through policy. It is here that I earlier spoke of discursive manifolds, where the excursion to the underlying epistemic principles and ontological starting points for considering critical thinking highlights that hidden below or within these manifolds might exist different ontological outlooks or cosmologies that operate at the level of the hegemonic, which are taken for granted to such a degree that we are no longer aware of them. Therefore, emphasising particular cultural or epistemic reference points in policy or critique might run the risk of taking these political and hegemonic acts (i.e. the discursive representation of totalities by drawing on specific discourses and ontological outlooks) in policy or ‘critiques’ as representative of a totality (hegemony), for example, policy depictions of Vietnamese culture and society. Having acknowledged this limit that different ontological and epistemic outlooks provide, for example, the limit of an outlook that locates critical thinking in epistemic individualism, I hope the analysis in this section has re-contextualised criticality in ESD and laid a ground for challenging a claim of universal criticality and its imperative. In the following section, I will turn to the following question: Should ‘criticality’ be conceived only as historically and contextually informed?

Discussion

In the context of our analysis of Vietnamese education policy and curricula reform, I argue that we should not frame it in terms of either promoting an understanding that draws on ‘Western’ ontological individualism or Confucian notions of thinking and judgement, primarily because both can be seen as limiting how we engage with the world.

This acknowledgement of the limiting aspect of onto-epistemic regimes and ‘meta-narratives’ has been previously pointed out by decolonial critiques within the field of comparative research on global citizenship education (GCE) and ESD (Pashby and de Oliveira Andreotti 2016;). Yet, the case of Vietnamese policymaking, I believe, problematises the reduction of these limits to a singular underlying matrix and dominant global imaginary (Pashby and de Oliveira Andreotti 2016). The case of Vietnamese policymaking and the role of criticality in education policy problematises the notion of a singular ‘epistemic frame’ as underlying or meta-hegemony that would be expressed through policy (de Oliveira Andreotti 2013). This appeal to the singular ‘epistemic frame’ challenges the highlighted contractions and tensions in the case of Vietnamese policymaking. What the comparative approach here aims to indirectly account for is the incommensurability between different ontologies and their related hegemonic ways of reasoning about education. Here, as elsewhere, I argue against using the epistemological and political reasons for a Marxist ‘combined and development’ theory and the logic of sublation to substantiate critique of neoliberalism (Bengtsson 2016) or in this case the critique of Western colonial modernity as expressed through an ‘onto-epistemic matrix’ (de Oliveira Andreotti 2013). What I refer to is the Marxist approach of showing the general development (i.e. capitalist imperialism) even in those socio-historic contexts that apparently do not fit in the depiction of that development. I critique this generalisation of development, which involves synthesis and as a result a form of epistemological imperialism. It might be tempting to align with the portrayed economist/globalist discourse, which seems to give meaning to learner-centred creative thinking with a global neoliberal imaginary of modern education might; however, these discourses ignore or colonise the specificity of Vietnamese education policy.

In the context of the role of historic imaginaries that frame education thinking in Vietnam, the reduction of imagination in and through education to modern colonial grammar (epistemic individualism) versus past colonial grammar (i.e. Chinese colonial influence through Confucianism and Taoism) is limiting as it only offers a grammar of the past. Thus, the analysis above would allow only for the possibility of pointing out two alternatives – ‘Western’ ontological individualism or Confucian notions of thinking and judgement – that can be pursed in and through education. I argue, in line with Vickers (2020), against a uniform conception of ‘non-West’ as standing in a dialectical relation to Western hegemony. The Confucian traces in Vietnamese education thought might accordingly also be hegemonic, in the earlier defined sense of providing the assumptions based on which thinking education becomes possible. In this sense, hegemony is generative and limiting as it allows for thinking education while simultaneously limits thinking education.

To move beyond identification with already given historical pathways and to move beyond either/or limitations, I argue for rethinking radicality in education as a means to engage with historicity of education in thought and practice. Returning to the analysis of global policy-frameworks on ESD, I see authenticity as a means to conceptualise an opening beyond or in the past. Like Lotz-Sisitka (2016), I see ‘authenticity’ as an entry point for a decolonial critique of a particular Western epistemological or other hegemonic ways of thinking education that can be colonialising or limiting. Yet, I would like to refrain from locating authenticity in the past or historicity. In particular, I would like to locate authenticity and radicality of thinking education in the future, similar to the recent UNESCO report of the International Commission on the Futures of Education, which states the following: ‘As a foresight exercise, this initiative explores predicted, possible, and preferred futures and then seeks to bring creative rethinking from the future into the present’ (2020, 3). Creativity or the radicality of critical thinking can engage with this form of ‘creative rethinking’ from the future, twisting and opening up again the limiting aspect of hegemonic ways of thinking and doing education in their plurality. Creativity and radicality of critical thinking is in this sense unable to know or predict the future but to open up and therefore to make the future authentic again by widening and growing accustom to the possibility of the future.

Conclusion

This paper discusses the conception of criticality in the context of the future, which overlaps with current comparative education research and environmental and sustainability education research. This overlap, I argue, offers entry points for invigorated and nuanced discussions of how we could understand the relationship between critique, past, and future when considering how the past, present, and future might be conceived in different ontologies and cosmologies.

Pashby and colleagues (2020) appeal to the discussion of the Anthropocene and posthumanism in the context of comparative studies of GCE in relation to the SDGs. This discussion, like the approach taken in this paper, is noteworthy as it calls for a critical and systemic engagement with colonial violence that fails to focus on unsustainability and the limits of the planet by arguing for an engagement with questions at the ontological level. Komatsu and Rappleye (2020) argue in the context of environmental concerns particularly for a ‘Finite Future Paradigm’, which substitutes ‘fundamental categories’ of existence (ontology) embedded deeply in culture and pulls the field of comparative education research back to its roots by recapturing its concerns with culturalist analysis with the historical dimensions of its tradition and with the emancipatory critique. In both cases, environmental concern or crisis is interpreted as an impetus to return to ontology as foundational to education thought.

This return to ontology in the context of environmental crisis, as in the present or an immanent future, is also mirrored in the field of environmental education research (e.g. Lotz-Sisitka 2009). Recent dialogue in the field (Clarke and Mcphie 2020) highlights ontological engagement in what we might call a materialist or realist conception of what a critical disposition towards the future might entail. This ontological turn towards materialism and realism can be seen as to supplement or problematising approach of a narrow focus on culture and history when engaging with the future. Materialist and realist critiques in the field of environmental and sustainability education research can be seen here to focus on the tendency of reducing the past, present and future to human practice and thinking in its diversity of reoccurrence (history). Here, the argument for places and objects is made that evades and withdraws from systemic and holistic human projections of boundaries and places (Saari and Mullen 2018). From this perspective, the Anthropocene is interpreted as to suggest that the emergence of humanity as a planetary actor brings into question the ability of that actor to abstract itself and its history from ‘planetary’ time while at the same time view human time (history) as not equivalent to planetary time (Bengtsson and van Poeck 2021).

Becoming aware in the Anthropocene that humanity is a planetary actor entails also becoming aware that humanity’s future is inextricably entwined with other futures that we did not know about or do not consider as relative to our preferred and predicted futures. Thus, what environmental education research might offer to the discussion of criticality in relation to the future is the suggestion that thinking cannot know or exhaustively imagine the future as we cannot know its limit and what ‘has been’. Accordingly, an alternative conception of critique in and through comparative education is potentially opened up. Future ‘authenticity’ points here towards a critique that is opening up rather than closing down hegemonic ambitions. To return to the question of whether the universal, systematic or decontextualised critical thinking is possible or whether it is culturally negotiated, I argue that criticality attunes to a feeling of the future that cannot be known. I argue that comparative education research drawing on decolonial engagement with alterity of education thought can offer a way to conceive of education in relation to this feeling of a future that is not known. My excursion into Tan’s (2017) conception of the Confucian notion of critical thinking provides an entry point into thinking about the future and its judgement with regards to the interpersonal dimension of Confucian judgement. This judgment, as Tan argues, is not grounded in the subject (freedom, emancipation, and autonomy) but in caring, which is not reduced to the individual self but connected to a general or communal position. In the Anthropocene, I would like to argue that we might understand this notion of ‘person’, ‘subject’ and ‘communal’ in the widest possible sense to include entities and objects that we might not even know yet.

Hence, comparative education research offers a way to discuss how critical thinking can engage with the future, or, as Komatsu and Rappleye (2020) argue, an entry into culturalist analysis with the historical dimensions of the traditions of education, yet not as a critique that is emancipatory but that facilitates an inter-objective dimension of judgement and caring for a communal future.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).