Sustainability in out-of-school science education: identifying the unique potentials

Abstract

Out-of-school science education institutions, such as museums, science centres, zoos and aquaria, have strong potentials to promote sustainability, yet seem to lack an operational definition of sustainability that aligns with their specific characteristics and institutional remit. Here, we use the anthropological theory of didactics to systematically develop such an operational definition, designated as the reference model. We draw on literature from research and practice to account for the features of sustainability science and policy, as well as the different specific strengths of out-of-school science education institutions, to identify unique potentials for sustainability education. These potentials are synthesised and illustrated in a set of institutionally specific guidelines that optimise the organisation of sustainability for each kind of out-of-school science education institution. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for sustainability education.

Keywords:

• Sustainability
• out-of-school science education
• museum
• science centre
• zoo
• aquaria

Introduction

Humanity is facing global challenges that are unprecedented in scale. Rising global temperatures, plastic pollution, biodiversity loss, deforestation and many other environmental issues require urgent and comprehensive action worldwide. In addition, large-scale social and economic issues such as poverty and inequality continue to affect millions of people across the world (Brandt et al. 2013; Jerneck et al. 2011). Sustainability is a notion ubiquitous in society today (Stevenson, Ferreira, and Emery 2016). Although it has been interpreted in various ways (Purvis, Mao, and Robinson 2019), there is wide-spread consensus that the three dimensions of environment, society and economics play major roles (e.g. Goodland 1995; Lele 1991; Martens 2006; McFarlane and Ogazon 2011). For instance, Kates (2011:19449) refers to sustainability as the ability to meet ‘the needs of the present and future generations while substantially reducing poverty and conserving the planet’s life support systems’.

Although achieving sustainability on a global scale is a daunting task, education has been identified as a crucial means to this end (e.g. Holfelder 2019). This form of education is called sustainability education, also referred to in the literature as education for sustainable development and education for sustainability (Aikens, McKenzie, and Vaughter 2016). These terms have been supported by the United Nations (UN) (Stevenson, Ferreira, and Emery 2016) and incorporated into their educational programmes, with 2005–2014 the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (Holfelder 2019). Sustainability education goes beyond changing knowledge, awareness and behaviour, to providing society with the skills for effective leadership and management that aids humanity in moving towards systemic change for global sustainability (Steinfeld and Mino 2009).

Recent literature has pointed to out-of-school science education as an especially important arena for preparing citizens for a sustainable future (e.g. Clayton 2017; Dillon 2017; Janes and Grattan 2019; Janes and Sandell 2019; Logan and Sutter 2012; Sellmann and Bogner 2013; Sutton et al. 2017). Out-of-school science education institutions (OSSEIs), such as museums, science centres, zoos and aquaria are globally distributed, receive large numbers of visitors annually, hold a high level of trust within society and across different political backgrounds, whilst also appealing to a diverse age-range (Cameron, Hodge, and Salazar 2013; Clayton 2017; Sutton et al. 2017). They thus have great potential worldwide, in reaching out to communities to contribute in changing the present day mind-set that is threatening the future of humanity on planet Earth (McFarlane and Ogazon 2011).

With this study, we seek to substantiate and qualify the claim that OSSEIs have a unique role to play in promoting global sustainability, that is, they can offer something due to their specific institutional conditions and practices that the formal school system cannot. We do this by developing the notion of sustainability based on not only its existing manifestations in out-of-school science education, but also on its possible manifestations. In the following section, we describe our methodological proposal and circumscribe the system under study. This system includes scholarly knowledge on sustainability (in the form of the still-emerging research domain of sustainability science), critical societal actors involved in deciding sustainability (education) policy, and the range of OSSEIs where sustainability education can potentially take place. Taking into account important features of sustainability that are simultaneously of relevance to OSSEIs and sanctioned by critical societal actors, we distil from this system the unique potentials (and conversely, the missed opportunities) for the institutions’ sustainability education.

Conceptual framework

Although there seems to be widespread agreement that OSSEIs are well situated to provide sustainability education, sustainability is not easily translated into practice in museums and other cultural institutions (Brown 2019; Cameron, Hodge, and Salazar 2013; Hedges 2021; Keogh and Möllers 2015). This has important implications for OSSEIs, whose efforts to provide sustainability education may be constrained by the lack of an operational definition of sustainability that aligns with their characteristics and remit. Without such a definition or framework, sustainability education risks being governed by the unpredictable funding patterns, serendipity, specialised campaigns and local idiosyncrasies that are reality for OSSEIs, rather than by a strong alignment between institutional strengths and sustainability objectives.

Although it is provocative, and potentially fraught, to offer examples of missed opportunities in sustainability education, we cautiously lay out a number of instances that we believe support our argument. The first example involves an exhibition about human origins in an American natural history museum. This exhibition was notably funded by the owner of a large energy and chemical conglomerate, who once claimed that the current climate disruption might be beneficial to humans (Little 2015). In his critique of the exhibition, Little discusses how it positions sudden, drastic climate change as part of a natural continuum, thereby indirectly whitewashing the present climate crisis. In another example from 2019, a Norwegian museum about fossil fuels opened an exhibition about sustainability. During a visit, the second author experienced this exhibition as a clear departure from the approach taken in other parts of the museum. In these, personal narratives, interactives, and awe-inspiring machinery and equipment had made for a compelling experience of fossil fuel extraction in Norway. In comparison, the sustainability exhibition was governed by text and diagrams, illustrating perhaps the difficulty of aligning the complex topic of sustainability with the object-based modality that is the museum’s established area of expertise. Finally, a UK-based science and technology museum ran an interactive exhibition on climate change in 2009. This exhibition was critiqued by Jones (2009) for being patronising, who pointed out that the majority of visitors who interacted with the exhibition ended up voting against the scientific consensus on climate change. Taken together, we suggest these three examples (and others) illustrate how sustainability has not been operationalised for out-of-school science education, and why science education professionals may well be anxious and doubtful about designing sustainability education (cf. Becker 2017; Kaufman 2012).

In response, we suggest that it might be valuable with a perspective on sustainability that comes from outside the institutions in question. Such a perspective could consider not only what OSSEIs are presently doing, but also what they potentially could be doing. The method to systematically construct such a point of reference has been developed in the research programme of the anthropological theory of didactics (ATD), which concerns itself with the diffusion of scientific knowledge through society and social institutions (e.g. schools or museums) and the conditions and constraints that govern that diffusion (Chevallard and Bosch 2014). ATD thus views society and its institutions as nested layers in an ecosystem that conditions and constrains scientific knowledge in different ways. Although it originated as a framework for research in school-based education systems, ATD has been used by researchers since the mid-1990s to understand how science diffuses through the parallel system of OSSEIs (Marandino and Mortensen 2010). Here, we draw on the out-of-school branch of ATD research, to analyse the conditions and constraints imposed by the ecosystem of sustainability that (potentially) shapes sustainability education. It is not our goal to provide an exhaustive analysis of this ecosystem; rather, we use ‘confirming sampling’ to identify conditions and constraints relevant to OSSEIs, building upon previous results (cf. Fraenkel, Wallen, and Hyun 2012). In the following, we provide further details of the conceptual framework.

The anthropological theory of didactics

According to ATD, what is taught in education institutions originates elsewhere, in universities or other ‘scholarly’ institutions, where it is adapted to a particular set of conditions. In order to become teachable and learnable, scientific knowledge must therefore be deconstructed and reconstructed into a suitable form (Chevallard and Bosch 2014). Generally, this deconstruction and reconstruction, or didactic transposition, takes place in two steps: first, elements of scholarly knowledge are selected to be taught or disseminated, and second, the selected elements of knowledge are transformed into a teachable form. The first step is governed by the so-called noosphere, which broadly speaking includes anyone voicing opinions about what knowledge should be taken up in education (Rasmussen 2017). This includes stakeholders and decision makers whose official role it is to respond to the demands made by society on educational institutions, for instance, when a ministry formulates criteria for science centres to receive government funding, or when a specialised organisation creates a definition of ‘museum’. The second step in the de/reconstruction of knowledge is governed by those who carry out teaching and dissemination, and involves the transformation of selected content into activities, installations, and other manifestations of pedagogical intentions in concrete education situations (Chevallard and Bosch 2014). The general ecosystem thus described is summed up by Figure 1.

Figure 1. Didactic transposition: The general process by which scholarly knowledge, constructed in research institutions, is deconstructed and reconstructed into a suitable teachable form that suits the institutional conditions of an OSSEI, such as a museum. This process involves first the selection of knowledge by actors in the noosphere, then the transformation of knowledge by educators and disseminators. Adapted from Chevallard and Bosch (2014).

The model of didactic transposition explains why knowledge is relative to the institution it exists within, and describes the process by which an object of knowledge becomes an object of dissemination through a process of transformation (Moormann and Bélanger 2019; Sandholdt and Achiam 2018; Simonneaux and Jacobi 1997). Perhaps most importantly, the model of didactic transposition indicates some of the complexity involved in producing objects of teaching. Among other things, this complexity means that the versions of knowledge found in educational institutions are not always the optimal ones. For instance, Nicolaisen and Achiam (2020) found that an exhibition on space exploration had inadvertently ‘inherited’ the masculine gendering found in the scholarly domain of astronomy and space technology, even though the exhibition was intended for audiences across the gender spectrum. In another example, Bueno and Marandino (2017) showed how the specifics of a chosen exhibit format constrained how biodiversity-related knowledge about the Amazon could be embodied, to the point of undermining the notion of biodiversity itself. Finally, Mortensen (2010, 2011) showed how the everyday notions of exhibit designers encroached on biological knowledge in the development of an exhibit about animal adaptations, ultimately causing learners to misinterpret the message of that exhibit. These studies and others remind us that we should not assume the way knowledge is organised in a given situation is the best one. As science education researchers, we should not uncritically accept the way knowledge is organised in a given situation, but rather, consider and account for alternative and relevant organisations of that knowledge.

ATD provides a tool, the reference model, to carry out this accounting in a systematic way. The reference model can be used in both critical analysis and productive design perspectives. In a critical analysis perspective, the reference model can be used to validate appropriate organisations of knowledge or point out inconsistencies or infelicities in them (cf. Achiam, Simony, and Lindow 2016; Bueno and Marandino 2017). In a productive design perspective, the reference model can be used to create organisations of knowledge optimised for specific teaching purposes (cf. Achiam, Lindow, and Simony 2019). In either case, the reference model is a means to account for the relevant organisations of a particular object of knowledge in its educational ecosystem (Figure 2).

Figure 2. The reference model is the explicit epistemological point of reference taken by the science education researcher, as suggested by ATD. It takes into account the relevant organisations of knowledge that exist in the contexts involved in didactic transposition and can be used in a critical analysis perspective or a productive design perspective. Adapted from Chevallard and Bosch (2014).

Here, we use the reference model in the latter sense, i.e. in a productive design perspective. We seek to construct an organisation of sustainability optimised for the purposes of OSSEIs. The educational ecosystem under study here thus includes the research domain of sustainability, societal actors within the noosphere, such as the UN, and OSSEIs that carry out sustainability education (Figure 3). All domains involved in the didactic transposition process within the educational system are treated equally (Chevallard and Bosch 2014).

Figure 3. The education system adapted for sustainability, designated here as the ‘ecosystem of sustainability education’.

The ecosystem of sustainability education

We now define and analyse the ecosystem of sustainability education to build a reference model of knowledge related to sustainability (Figure 3), optimised for the purposes of OSSEIs. We elaborate on elements within the scholarly knowledge and noosphere domains that are simultaneously important features of sustainability and of relevance to the institutions in question. Finally, we synthesise these elements in terms of OSSEIs and how they can optimally contribute to preparing citizens in navigating the necessary steps towards a more sustainable society.

Sustainability science

Sustainability science is an umbrella term (Kastenhofer, Bechtold, and Wilfing 2011; Shahadu 2016) that aims to ‘make the normative concept of sustainability operational’ (Spangenberg 2011:276). This relatively young field studies the interactions between natural and social systems (Clark 2007; Clark and Dickson 2003; Kates et al. 2001; Spangenberg 2011), as well as how those interactions affect humanity’s ability to meet the needs of present and future generations (Kates 2011). To sufficiently understand the behaviour of these systems, gaining knowledge on individual elements within them is not enough (Clark and Dickson 2003). The integration of systems is critical in understanding the interconnected nature of sustainability, involving methods that combine elements of intertwined human and natural systems, across the dimensions of space, time and organisational level (Liu et al. 2015).

Spangenberg (2011) describes two forms of sustainability science: the monodisciplinary science for sustainability and the transdisciplinary science of sustainability. Briefly, science for sustainability takes a ‘knowledge-first approach’, and includes the descriptive-analytical basic research that is carried out within or in parallel between traditional scientific disciplines. Science of sustainability includes transformational, process-oriented approaches that are driven by real-world problems and thus inherently interdisciplinary (Clark 2007; Miller et al. 2014; Wittmayer and Schäpke 2014). The emergence of science of sustainability has been described as a response to the new challenges that emerged from the problems of sustainable development themselves (Martens 2006; Spangenberg and Connor 2010) because, it is suggested, the problems of sustainability cannot be solved by the same mentality that helped create them (Einstein’s dictum, cf. Spangenberg 2011; Fang et al. 2018). In the present paper, we focus on the science of sustainability (hereafter: ‘sustainability science’), which necessarily transcends, and critically reflects on, the boundaries of the traditional science disciplines.

Sustainability science is transdisciplinary

As mentioned, due to the broad nature of global sustainability problems that include environmental, economic and social dimensions, sustainability science is a transdisciplinary process working simultaneously between, across and beyond disciplines. This ‘integrative science’ works to break down boundaries found between disciplines (Barrett 2001; Martens 2006), with many different disciplines of science working collaboratively (interdisciplinary) to study mutual problems (Brandt et al. 2013; Kim and Oki 2011). Multiple disciplines partake in both research and dissemination, and methods are transferred across disciplines, allowing for the integration of data (Spangenberg 2011).

Sustainability science involves extended peer communities

Sustainability science is located at the intersection between science and policy; between scientists, decision makers, and the public (Spangenberg 2011). It is important for sustainability science to involve actors from outside academia to generate integrated solution options and create ownership across stakeholder groups (Craps 2019; Lang et al. 2012). Inclusive participatory processes are employed that involve the scientific community, stakeholders in society (i.e. policymakers, business representatives and social institutions) and citizens themselves (Kates et al. 2001; Martens 2006; Spangenberg 2011). This means that in sustainability science, instead of being given priority in finding solutions, science is just one kind of contribution to a discursive process of joint knowledge construction (Brandt et al. 2013). In this way, the different groups of stakeholders become an extended peer community of sorts for the scientists—and vice versa (Spangenberg 2011).

The involvement of different groups of stakeholders is challenging. Generally speaking, scientists, policymakers and the public are ‘epistemologically distant’ from one another, meaning that when they make sense of sustainability problems, they use differing analytical paradigms (Garvin 2001), and may evaluate for instance the credibility or salience of findings in very different ways (Lang et al. 2012). As a result, the uncertainty that characterises decision-making processes in sustainability science cannot always be resolved, but rather managed through different engagement models (Brandt et al. 2013; Martens 2006).

Sustainability science addresses real-world problems

By definition, sustainability science addresses problems that arise in the interactions between global, social and human systems (Komiyama and Takeuchi 2006). This means that sustainability science deals with societally relevant, purpose-bound problems that often differ qualitatively from the primacy of science or value-free stance characteristic of the traditional scientific approach (Kauffman 2009; Lang et al. 2012). These ‘wicked’ problems are complex, require immediate action and impact far into the future on both global and local scales (Brundiers, Wiek, and Redman 2010; van der Leeuw et al. 2012).

Sustainability science takes a global and local perspective

A growing number of scholars emphasise the place-based nature of sustainability science (Devine-Wright 2013; Potschin and Haines-Young 2013), reminding us that the environmental movements of the 19th and 20th centuries that preceded sustainability science were fundamentally about place and geography (Shrivastava and Kennelly 2013). A sense of place can be important on both the global and local level (Feitelson 1991). The phrase ‘think global, act local’ has become a popular part of rhetoric on the sustainability agenda over recent decades, leading to the belief that sustainability issues on a global scale can be translated into a comprehensible form on a more personal scale (Jasanoff 2010). Although sustainability science plays out on many spatial scales from global to local (Kates et al. 2001; Martens 2006), it is argued that to be more than an abstract idea, sustainability and its associated challenges (e.g. climate change) must be operationalised at a local or regional scale (Martens 2006), compared to one focused on distant regions and their habitats (Brace and Geoghegan 2011). Further, because a key element of sustainability science is the successful establishment of extended peer communities, it is necessary to engage with the place-based knowledge of local publics and decision-makers (Brandt et al. 2013, Potschin and Haines-Young 2013).

Sustainability science has a temporal aspect

Sustainability focuses on the future that humanity will face, meaning that it has an embedded temporal element (Cavender-Bares et al. 2015). In addition, our understanding of many of the problems we face today comes from an awareness of the past (Goeminne and Paredis 2010; Markley 2012). For instance, the reconstruction of Earth’s past climate, which is the basis of our present understanding of climate change, relies on historical records such as ice cores (e.g. Dansgaard et al. 1993), tree rings (e.g. Fritts, Lofgren, and Gordon 1980), and sediment layers (e.g. Tian, Nelson, and Hu 2011) that reveal signs of long-term temperature variability. Our observation of the present biodiversity crisis would have been impossible without baseline records of past biodiversity (e.g. Fonseca et al. 2001; Suarez and Tsutsui 2004). Despite this, general conceptions of sustainability science lack a temporal perspective (Munasinghe and Swart 2005). Accordingly, sustainability scholars have suggested adding a temporal dimension to definitions of sustainable development (Martens 2006; Seghezzo 2009). This dimension foregrounds the differences in speed of human and non-human activities, for instance, agricultural techniques that degrade the productivity of soil versus the long cycles of regeneration periods (Held 2001).

In summary, the features of sustainability science that are of particular relevance to the present study are transdisciplinarity, the engagement of extended peer communities, a focus on real-world problems, a global and local perspective, and the temporal aspects of sustainability. We turn now to survey how sustainability is discussed and formulated in the noosphere, by decision-makers and other actors who have a stake in what aspects of sustainability should be taken up in education. As we shall see in the following section, notions of sustainability are shaped by noosphere conditions and constraints that are quite different to those that govern the research domain of sustainability science.

Sustainability in the noosphere

In 1987, sustainability appeared on the world-stage via the UN World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) report titled Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Report (WCED 1987). Globally, it received substantial political backing on the critical need for sustainability action (Goodland 1995), and prompted an ever-growing discussion in the noosphere about sustainability in relation to society and education. As we lay out in the following, actors in the noosphere, from overarching organisations of human civilisation to national institutions, have opinions about sustainability and its societal and educational significance.

One of the most pervasive conceptions of sustainability in the noosphere is that of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Purvis, Mao, and Robinson 2019), forming a large part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations 2015). The seventeen goals focus on different aspects of the global ‘wicked’ problems we face (Weymouth and Hartz-Karp 2018), while operationalising sustainability for policy and education worldwide. Their transdisciplinary nature reflects the idea that global action is required across environmental, economic and societal dimensions, by a coalition of actors more diverse than just governments. The goals are linked through their interactions with each other via synergies (positive strides in one SDG that benefit another) and trade-offs (positive strides in one SDG that hamper another). The enhancement of synergies and finding solutions to trade-offs play an essential role in whether they are achieved (Kroll, Warchold, and Pradhan 2019).

Criticisms of the SDGs focus on the severe lack of accountability for governments, industries and citizens (Spangenberg 2017). In addition, the large number of targets and indicators provide a major obstacle in communicating them effectively to the public, engaging with policy, as well as the amount of monitoring and quantifying required to measure any progress. Further critique focuses on their contradictory nature, such as the difficult balancing act of achieving both growth focused and environmental goals (Liverman 2018; Swain 2018).

The SDGs afford bottom-up processes

The SDGs were created through a participatory and inclusive bottom-up process that involved input from more than 70 governments and many representatives of civil society (Biermann, Kanie, and Kim 2017; Spangenberg 2017). This process emphasised the role of businesses, cities, citizens, consumers and civil society as agents of change, and the resulting set of goals has been lauded for its potential to become the guiding vision for action across governmental, corporate and civil societies (Hajer et al. 2015). As they fundamentally break with prior attempts to create legally binding or top-down regulated global governance, the SDGs afford a large extent of national or even institutional discretion in interpreting and implementing the goals (Biermann, Kanie, and Kim 2017). This allows for, but also requires, a strong degree of stakeholder-orientation, and provides space for the diversity of perspectives on sustainable development needed to engage a range of logics, actors and institutions (Hajer et al. 2015; Messerli et al. 2019; Mukhi and Quental 2019).

The SDGs are amenable to adaptation

The SDGs are aimed at global application. However, because they are non-binding and have limited oversight, adaptation by more specialised organisations is necessary (Biermann, Kanie, and Kim 2017). Indeed, a number of organisations with direct relevance to OSSEIs have incorporated aspects of the SDGs into their missions. For instance, in 2018 the International Council of Museums (ICOM) formed a working group to mainstream the SDGs across its activities and help its member museums support the SDGs (Brown 2019). An objective in their 2020–2022 mandate is ‘to inspire ICOM, its committees and members through science based data and strategies to embrace the SDGs and promote good practices in becoming energy efficient, sustainable institutions’ (ICOM 2020). An even stronger focus on science is found in the Tokyo Protocol, formulated by the Science Centre World Summit (SCWS) in 2017, which observes that ‘public engagement and action in science and technology are key to achieving the SDGs’ and states that science centres and science museums worldwide are deeply committed to helping all people participate in the solutions to meet them (SCWS 2017). Finally, during their annual conference in mid-October 2020, the World Association of Zoos and Aquaria (WAZA) released its 2020–2030 sustainability strategy, titled ‘Protecting our Planet’. The report places a strong emphasis on guiding WAZA institutions to most effectively use their unique conditions in contributing to the achievement of the SDGs, through recommendations tailored for each of the 17 goals (WAZA 2020). This particular organisation observes that their members make an effort to live in harmony with nature, and ‘are helping their visitors and surrounding communities to take better care of the planet’ (WAZA n.d.).

The SDGs could be viewed as resulting from a series of global compromises made between development and sustainability, with their transdisciplinary nature an essential part of dealing with ‘wicked’ sustainability problems (Craps 2019). Over the next decade, they will continue to play an influential role in shaping sustainability policy in the noosphere, with numerous organisations of direct relevance to OSSEIs absorbing them into their practices.

Out-of-school science education institutions

As we have shown, sustainability is a widespread topic of discussion among scholars and academics, and pervades interactions between stakeholders, decision-makers and communities in the noosphere as well. In contrast, sustainability is ‘seldom well-defined for museology’ (Brown 2019:3), meaning that when OSSEIs are indicated as key actors in sustainability education, broad and non-specific terms are used. Although we agree that OSSEIs share a number of characteristics, e.g. being free of curriculum constraints that characterise schools or focusing on providing a social, entertaining and educational experience for their visitors (Clayton 2017), we contend that they also have important distinguishing features (cf. Cameron, Hodge, and Salazar 2013). For instance, while museums define themselves in terms of the three pillars of collections, research and dissemination, science centres focus more on science/nature phenomena and interactive hands-on demonstrations (Schwan, Grajal, and Lewalter 2014), and have neither collections nor their own scientific research function. Zoos and aquaria, in contrast, place a strong focus on conservation through ‘living collections’ (McCalman 2017). In the following, we discuss the opportunities for sustainability education afforded by the particular institutional strengths that characterise different types of OSSEIs.

OSSEIs transcend disciplinary boundaries

Generally speaking, OSSEIs are not limited by the disciplinary boundaries that characterise school subjects, but instead have more systems-based perspectives. For instance, natural history museums often focus on cross-cutting content such as evolutionary relationships, systematics, biodiversity and ecosystem perspectives (King and Achiam 2017), while science centres work across the disciplines in science & technology (Short and Weis 2013) and zoos and aquaria often use the concept of biome to organise their content. This means that these institutions in different ways can enhance the integration of multiple scientific disciplines, a crucial feature of sustainability science (Martens 2006).

OSSEIs are (becoming) inclusive and accessible

Recent years have seen a marked increase in discussions about the accessibility of out-of-school science education practices (Dawson 2014). As a result, many OSSEIs have increased their efforts to provide visitors across gender, ethnic, ability and socioeconomic spectrums with appealing and equitable experiences (Achiam and Sølberg 2017; Black 2012). Further, as we have seen, the inclusion of a wide variety of perspectives seems crucial for understanding and addressing global sustainability challenges. Accordingly, there seems to be an important potential at the intersection of sustainability science, the SDGs and OSSEIs for framing conversations and activities that include scientific, lay, practical and indigenous knowledge (Messerli et al. 2019).

OSSEIs are hubs for dialogue and debate between science and society

OSSEIs are sites that encourage dialogue and debate, hold a high level of trust within society, and capture a broad audience (Ballard et al. 2017; Cameron, Hodge, and Salazar 2013; Clayton 2017; Logan and Sutter 2012; Novacek 2008). Practitioners view their institutions as being more than just a site for disseminating facts, but for ‘collective deliberation of current issues’ (Sutton et al. 2017:153). Holding this level of trust can allow OSSEIs to act as intellectually safe hubs for the general public to meet scientists and policymakers, creating interactions and dialogue between academic and non-academic practitioners (Rodegher and Freeman 2019) that are legitimate experiments between different approaches (Pereira et al. 2015).

Citizen science involves the incorporation of both the natural and social sciences (Ballard et al. 2017) and often exemplifies ‘two-way knowledge sharing’ (Sforzi et al. 2018). It provides an opportunity for the public and stakeholders in society to engage with scientists and take part in scientific research (Novacek 2008). An increasing awareness felt within OSSEIs of the importance of being seen to engage in present-day sustainability issues, as well as the desire to enhance their public value, have led for example natural history museums to conduct a greater number of citizen science projects (Sforzi et al. 2018). These institutions often have elements of research and dissemination in the same building, providing suitable opportunities for citizen science. These projects provide an opportunity for the public and stakeholders in society to engage with scientists and take part in scientific research (Novacek 2008).

OSSEIs offer different modes of communication

Scientific research is usually codified, published and presented in a manner that is difficult for non-scientists to understand or even access. OSSEIs, on the other hand, have significant expertise in deconstructing scientific knowledge and reconstructing it according to their specific institutional modalities. This expertise provides important opportunities for the communication of sustainability science through tangible, multisensory and social experiences. The emphasis on the hands-on approach in many science centres encourages their visitors to explore and experiment (Short and Weis 2013). Zoos and aquaria, on the other hand, stimulate emotion and empathy among their visitors by focusing on the conservation of biodiversity, and providing immersive experiences in real-life biomes and habitats (Catibog-Sinha 2008; Clayton 2017; Gippoliti 2011). Finally, the use of artistic interventions by OSSEIs may provide further opportunities in disseminating complex issues (e.g. Crossick and Kaszynska 2016).

OSSEIs work at multiple spatial scales

OSSEIs engage with and disseminate aspects of science at both global and local spatial scales; i.e. at the governmental and community level, dependent on the challenges faced by (and the needs of) society (Sutton et al. 2017). This takes place for example through natural history museums, zoos and aquaria working at a global level to protect the world’s biodiversity, while simultaneously contributing to projects focused on protecting local ecosystems (Sutton et al. 2017). It is essential that the top-down global conservation strategies take full note of how essential locally driven initiatives are to the protection of biodiversity (Rodríguez et al. 2007).

The wide variety of OSSEIs in their different forms and foci provide a range of global and local orientations. Nationally based natural history museums often exhibit global topics, such as the rapid rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, compared to locally based ecomuseums, in which the local population are involved with making decisions (Borrelli and Davis 2012). Ecomuseums focus on cultural heritage, whereas other museums may focus on objects (Logan and Sutter 2012). An important aim for ecomuseums is to increase the sense of place in the community, by improving the relationship on a local scale between nature and society (Davis 1999). Zoos and aquaria have the infrastructure to disseminate global and local aspects, however these institutions attract visitors by mostly focusing on ‘mega vertebrates’ from around the world (Gippoliti 2011).

OSSEIs have a historical consciousness

Sustainability challenges such as climate change can be expressed by showing the historical interactions that have occurred between nature and humanity, thereby re-shaping the challenge as a cultural issue, rather than one just for the scientific community (Lidström and Åberg 2016). Not only are OSSEIs well placed to contribute to this re-shaping, but they also disseminate sustainability challenges in a manner that covers the past, present and future. For instance, zoos’ living collections allow them to disseminate the past conservation history of a species, its present status and the conservation efforts required to preserve it for the future. A science centre can use its focus on technology and engineering to show how these fields are rapidly changing and what they may look like for the next generations. Natural history museums and science and technology museums are defined by their collections: three-dimensional, cultural memory banks that represent the world’s past and present material diversity and adaptive intelligence (Janes and Sandell 2019). Their collections give these museums a unique historical consciousness of sustainability problems.

The reference model: synthesising science, policy and practice

We return now to our main argument, that the efforts of OSSEIs to offer effective sustainability education may be constrained by the lack of an operational definition of sustainability aligning with their unique characteristics. In the preceding, we identified the features of sustainability science, of how societal stakeholders see and legitimise sustainability, and of OSSEIs’ particular strengths; all of which need to be considered when designing effective sustainability education initiatives outside school. Taken together, these features circumscribe a range of opportunities for out-of-school science education that optimise the fit between sustainability knowledge, institutional conditions and constraints, and pedagogical expertise. The reference model we synthesise in the following is thus not one particular constellation of content and form, but rather a set of institutionally specific guidelines, illustrated by ideas and initiatives, that could be used by OSSEI staff members and stakeholders to optimise their sustainability education offers.

Natural history museums

Natural history museums have a privileged relationship with the so-called historical sciences (King and Achiam 2017), which share an epistemological orientation that crosses disciplinary boundaries. In marked contrast to what is the case for the formal education system, the transdisciplinary orientation of natural history museums is often supported by conditions in the noosphere, here exemplified by the Danish Museum Law for Natural History Museums, which states: ‘the Danish natural history museums shed light on nature and its development, current environment and interplay with humans’ (Ministry of Culture 2014). These conditions provide a strong foundation for the systemic approach of sustainability science, which as noted calls for approaches that transcend traditional disciplines.

The complex nature of ‘wicked’ sustainability problems means that different kinds of contributions are required that span the academic and non-academic domains and lead to socially robust knowledge being produced that can grapple with these global issues. However, conversations between scientists, decision-makers and the public are challenging to frame and manage, due to the differences and degrees of specialisation each expert brings to the conversation (Garvin 2001). Here, natural history museums have significant expertise to offer in mediating between science and society, and in making science accessible to a broad diversity of the public. Even though, as we discussed in the preceding, not all OSSEIs are as inclusive and accessible as they would like to be, still there are numerous promising examples of these trusted institutions engaging diverse publics in dialogue with experts to co-produce new and robust knowledge. Through the creation of dialogue and debate, natural history museums are presented with many opportunities for increasing inclusivity with their visitors and among local areas. The Natural History Museum London offers the opportunity for the public to meet their scientists through bi-weekly interactive talks. In addition, they run a variety of inclusive and easily accessible citizen projects, inviting the public in collecting important data to aid the museums’ researchers (Natural History Museum London n.d.).

Natural history museums have the ability to engage with and disseminate aspects of sustainability at both global and local spatial scales. By doing so, they can act as important sites for educating society about environmental issues and provide a strong sense of place, through heritage interpretation and connections with nature (McElroy 2015; Novacek 2008; Uzzell 1996). Many institutions take more of a global focus in their exhibits, but link to local aspects through public talks and interactions with practitioners. Others, such as ecomuseums, place a focus purely on local aspects and cultural heritage. Simeoni and Crescenzo (2018) discuss the proposed development of an ecomuseum in Italy, focused on the creation of a new cycle path and promoting the city’s renewable energy heritage.

Finally, we have already substantiated the inherent temporal perspective of sustainability science. At the same time, the time scales involved in various sustainability problems are difficult for many of us to grasp, because they cannot be accommodated within our shared time-frame of a generation or a life-time (Held 2001). Natural history museums have significant expertise to offer with respect to disseminating the extended timelines of geological, evolutionary, or cultural processes. Using the 2–3 billion specimens worldwide collected over the last 300 years, they provide critical historical discourse on biodiversity covering millions of years (Krishtalka and Humphrey 2000). The 80 million specimens held at the Natural History Museum London are used in various ways, for example furthering understanding of climate change and responses by biodiversity, i.e. four species of British butterflies over the 19th and 20th centuries (Brooks et al. 2014). In this same institution, a giant tree-ring from a sequoia tree provides historical consciousness in terms of sustainability. This 1,300-year-old object has been at the museum since 1893 and is used on the institutions’ website to discuss humanity’s effects on the planet, including climate change and deforestation (Pavid n.d.).

Science and technology museums

Science and technology museums arose from the waves of industrialisation that swept across Europe and North America from the late 1700s. Since these beginnings, they have maintained collections of artifacts associated with industry and technology; like natural history museums, they thus represent our collective historical consciousness through their collections. Of particular relevance for sustainability education is the role of these collections as fundamental sources of cumulative technological memory at this moment in time where we seek solutions for a sustainable future (Janes and Sandell 2019). For example, the Danish Museum of Science & Technology (Teknisk Museum) exhibits innovations that have dramatically changed the course of humanity over the past 150 years, from cars and planes to space exploration (Teknisk Museum n.d.). Presenting the connectivity of the past and the future in this way may help counteract the deferral of sustainability and climate change as ‘problems of the future’ that seems to permeate public discourse (Nixon 2017; Salazar 2014).

With their roots in engineering and industrial design, science and technology museums are inherently transdisciplinary, and thus well positioned to engage the public in cross-cutting activities. In 2014–2016, the Deutsches Museum (of science & technology) in Munich displayed an exhibition about the Anthropocene, the current geological epoch linked to the increasing influence of humanity on Earth’s processes (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000). This exhibition engaged visitors in investigating society’s past, present and future through transdisciplinary themes such as urbanisation, mobility, nature, evolution, food, and human-machine interaction (Deutsches Museum n.d.). The multiple perspectives and non-linear layout of the exhibition seemed especially well suited to the systemic and interconnected nature of the challenges of the Anthropocene (Keogh and Möllers 2015).

Finally, just like natural history museums, science and technology museums have considerable expertise navigating the interface between science and society. As noted, a key challenge is to present and discuss sustainability in a way that does not obliterate other forms of knowledge and practices (Salazar 2014). Science and technology museums have a special role to play here, as industrialisation has often made forceful intrusions into the homelands of indigenous people and communities, who had otherwise lived in harmony with nature (Anderson and Hadlaw 2018; Main 2017). Science and technology museums can build relationships with such groups to create and enrich collective understandings of the role of science, technology and engineering in contemporary society (Alberti et al. 2018), and help audiences grapple with the emotional, cultural and physical challenges of the present crisis (Main 2017). For instance, Museums Victoria offer education activities based on the science and technology of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders that illustrate how these communities lived in ways that were sustainable for the future and the lessons that can be learned from them (Museums Victoria 2020).

Science centres

Over the past half century and more, science centres have maintained strong links with the experimental sciences (Oppenheimer 1968). This association with hands-on experience and experimentation presents them with an array of potentials in disseminating sustainability challenges. As discussed, sustainability science is oriented toward real-world problems that are observed and experienced by people, e.g. the flooding of agricultural areas due to climate change (Adger 1999) or the health risks of the haze caused by widespread use of fire to clear land (Lohman, Bickford, and Sodhi 2007). For observers of real-world problems, whether they are citizens or researchers, the immediacy of these problems is apparent. However, this immediacy can get lost in translation as sustainability problems are transposed to school classrooms or laboratories and codified in terms of the texts, graphs, tables and diagrams that characterise school science. In contrast, science centres offer experiential, affective and material approaches to their subject matter. These approaches allow visitors to transcend time and place to experience things ‘possibly being so’ (Achiam, Nicolaisen, and Ibsen 2019; Achiam and Sølberg 2017). Science centres are thus able to recreate the immediacy of sustainability problems in ways that are discernible by a broad range of visitors. The climate change exhibition KLIMA X, on view in various science centres in Europe over the past decade, presents an example of aspects of sustainability disseminated through the use of different communication modalities. The floor of KLIMA X was flooded with water to simulate sea level rise, and visitors would wade through the water, wearing wellington boots provided by the museum (Kahn 2015). An ice block, gradually melting, was located in the middle of the exhibition, and with intervals, simulated thunder and rain would appear to illustrate meteorological disturbances. In a study of 15–16 year olds visiting the exhibition, Gorr (2014) found significant changes in their emotional involvement in climate change, possibly because of their physical and kinaesthetic experiences in the exhibition.

The Danish science centre, Experimentarium, carried out a series of hands-on workshops, where public health experts engaged adults and children from across the socio-economic spectrum in dialogue about what exercise and movement meant for them. The workshops harnessed the hands-on expertise of the science centre, allowing children and adults to participate using different communication modalities; at the same time, the science centre provided a comfortable and safe space for what could have been uncomfortable interactions about health. The workshops gave rise to a progressive and socially inclusive conceptualisation of health (Bønnelycke, Sandholdt and Jespersen 2019a,2019b; Sandholdt and Achiam 2018) that was subsequently embodied in a successful and inclusive exhibition.

Zoos and aquaria

Zoos and aquaria, aided by their grounding within ecology and conservation biology (Gippoliti 2011), have strong relationships with the biodiversity domain. The visual display of live animals is the main educational part of a visit to a zoo or aquaria (Churchman 1985) and coming into contact with aspects of nature plays a vital role in environmental education (Stern, Powell, and Hill 2014). Biome focused exhibits allow several biodiversity species to coexist in a manner closely resembling the habitats on Earth. For instance, the Rainforest exhibit at Copenhagen Zoo is an indoor multi-sensory experience, with a high level of humidity and thick mass of vegetation. In comparison, the South Pole Spectacular exhibit at Ocean Park Hong Kong provides a chilly and immersive experience, with the chance to closely interact with three different penguin species. Both exhibits have educational programmes and activities focused on associated sustainability challenges, including deforestation and climate change respectively.

Research has shown a link between society’s actions towards climate change and feeling connected to biodiversity in zoos (Clayton et al. 2014). These institutions have an opportunity to increase the feeling of sense of place among their visitors. Odense Zoo in Denmark recently installed an immersive tree-top exhibit focused on local nature (Odense Zoo n.d.). Bejjani (2018) found a greater sense of place among visitors to zoos that focused more on local species, as well as among local zoo visitors. Research has shown that a sense of place can play an important role in the ability of local populations to adapt to changing ecosystems, such as from climate change (e.g. Adger et al. 2013). Through memories and experiences, an individual or group can develop an emotional connection to a particular setting or environment (Masterson et al. 2017), creating a personal feeling of connection to the world around you.

Implications for sustainability education

In this study, we have substantiated and qualified the claim that OSSEIs have specialised roles to play in promoting global sustainability. It has already been established that to ensure sustainability education is successful, transformative pedagogical innovations are required that are inter/transdisciplinary, place-based and experiential (Brundiers, Wiek, and Redman 2010; Sipos, Battisti, and Grimm 2008). However, the institutionally specific reference model we present here goes further in arguing and illustrating the potentials for sustainability education that are singular to different kinds of OSSEIs, and that optimise the fit between knowledge, pedagogy and institution. In the following, we discuss the implications of our findings for sustainability education.

First, we have taken an institutional and content specific approach because previous research seems to have been focused first and foremost on offering proof of concept that educational institutions can indeed provide sustainability education programmes, rather than getting into more detailed studies of what each kind of institution or setting can specifically offer. For instance, in a review of climate change education research, Monroe et al. (2019) group together school classrooms, botanical gardens, summer programmes, exhibits, and other settings to identify effective strategies. Kemmis and Mutton (2012) characterise exemplary practices in education for sustainability across educational, governmental, and community settings. While these authors discuss the importance of place and materiality for sustainability education, the exemplary practices are formulated in terms that are not specific to content or setting, e.g. sayings, doings and relations. Green and Somerville (2015) find that across eight primary schools, good practices included prompting creative processes, partnerships with the local community, connections with local places, and the materiality of school grounds. Again, although this study acknowledges the importance of place and materiality, the good practices themselves seem to remain non-specific to sustainability content or setting. Finally, Janes (2015:5) discusses how museums can and should confront climate change, based on their ‘historical consciousness, sense of place, long-term stewardship, knowledge base, public accessibility, and unprecedented public trust’, yet these are features that cut across museums of all disciplines.

There are many good reasons for studies such as these to deal with overarching features of sustainability education, rather than delving into content-specific and institution-specific considerations (e.g. Rasmussen 2017). One reason might be, as we hinted in the preceding, that it has been necessary for the educational research community to provide a general proof of concept of educational institutions’ ability to carry out sustainability education, before more detailed studies could be prioritised (Katiliūtė, Daunorienė, and Katkutė 2014). Another reason might be that because sustainability remains rather broad and ill-defined for education, both inside and outside schools (Brown 2019; Jickling and Wals 2008), the tasks of both sustainability educators and researchers are difficult to concretise. However, we believe the trade-off between the broad generalisability of a study, on one hand, and its specific implications for practice, on the other, is worth making. Accordingly, we have sought to describe content-specific and institution-specific potentials for sustainability education.

The SDGs are the strongest directive yet seen for sustainability education policy and practice (Sterling et al. 2017), and simultaneously shape the foci of specialised organisations and individual institutions and constrain them to the 17 themes involved. Even so, progress towards achieving the goals has been slow, with the majority of the 169 targets off track. In fact, the goals related to biodiversity loss, climate change and inequality are showing negative progress (Messerli et al. 2019). Sutton et al. (2017) argue that museums have the capacity to contribute to all 17 SDGs, in particular SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals), while McGhie (2019) has produced a comprehensive guide aiding museums in embracing the SDGs, and Chung, Tyan, and Lee (2019) exemplify how museums can positively add to SDG progress. Indeed, the recent focus of attention from specialised organisations (e.g. ICOM, SCWS and WAZA) on the goals indicates that they will play an increasingly important part in shaping sustainability education in out-of-school practice. However, it must also be considered for what reasons these organisations and their members are absorbing them into their policies and practices. This focus could be based on a drive to maintain relevance among visitors and potential funders, or perhaps a response to bottom-up pressure instigated by practitioners. Further, the SDGs might be viewed by OSSEIs as a recognisable platform to gain quick and easy answers for sustainability education that obviates the need for comprehensive systematic reviews of dissemination policies and practices. These questions remain outstanding.

Finally, an important issue related to sustainability education, that admittedly is beyond the scope of the argument presented here, is that of institutional ideology. Sustainability education has been discussed in terms of activism and advocacy (e.g. Rodegher and Freeman 2019); approaches that many OSSEIs avoid in an attempt to remain neutral (e.g. Sforzi et al. 2018). This avoidance is perhaps what is manifested when some OSSEIs consciously and explicitly steer clear of the SDGs, and instead focus on providing basic scientific knowledge related to sustainability that fits with their institutional strengths. Although we understand that OSSEIs do not wish to jeopardise their position as highly trusted and impartial, we would argue (alongside others, e.g. Evans et al. 2020; Janes 2009; Janes 2015; Janes and Grattan 2019; Rodegher and Freeman 2019) that simply providing knowledge about science related to sustainability is not sufficient; it is, in effect, engaging the public in the science for sustainability, rather than science of sustainability (cf. Spangenberg 2011). Accordingly, we end our discussion by stating that we not only think it is essential for OSSEIs to use their unique potentials and institutional specificities to fully embrace sustainability education, we also think that incorporating related policies and practices into OSSEIs’ external and internal workings is all-important. By doing so, these globally distributed and trusted sites of out-of-school science education can lead from the front as catalysts for a sustainable future.

In conclusion, we acknowledge the many challenges faced by specialised organisations, individual institutions and their practitioners. We hope that our suggestions can stimulate discussion, debate and research within out-of-school science education and related fields, spurring progress towards the operationalisation of sustainability for practice and ultimately leading to more systematic and effective contributions to global sustainability.

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to our colleagues at the Department of Science Education, University of Copenhagen, for their willingness to discuss this research. In addition, we would like to thank practitioners from multiple OSSEIs for their insights towards institutional specificities and sustainability education. Finally, we thank the reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

The authors are unaware of any conflicts of interest, financial interest or benefit that has arisen from the direct applications of this research.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Henry James Evans

Henry James Evans is a PhD student at the Department of Science Education, University of Copenhagen. His research interests are in sustainability and out-of-school science education, with a point of departure in museums, science centres, zoos and aquaria.

Marianne Achiam

Marianne Achiam is an Associate Professor at the Department of Science Education, University of Copenhagen. She is the head of the research group on out-of-school science education, and her research focuses on how the science of scientists becomes the science disseminated in institutions such as museums and science centres and ultimately, the science of learners.