Socio-ecological sustainability through transformative education

Change in social institutions and interactions is rarely free of tension. Conflicts manifest along the social, cultural, economic, and environmental dimensions of the SDGs, where intersectional inclusion and exclusion by gender, class/socioeconomic positioning, ethnic and social origin, religion/belief, disability, sexual identity, and age/generation are significant (Backhouse/Tittor 2019; Degele/Winker 2007). Migration and diversity are particularly relevant as cross-cutting issues for all Sustainable Development Goals and their implementation strategies (Global Compact on Migration and Refugees, UN 2018; Alisch/Westphal 2022; cf. SDGs 10.3; 10.7 and 16.1 and 16.2).

Beyond individualizing responsibility

Previous measures of "Education for Sustainable Development" and "Global Learning" shifted responsibility to the level of individual, private and civil society actors (e.g. in community service) with a strong emphasis on ecological sustainability - often without sufficient inclusion of social conflict lines and the realities of (post-)migration. It is true that numerous educational programs of UNESCO, the Council of Europe, and federal and state programs aim to implement sustainable and diversity-reflective education as "lifelong learning" in all formal and non-formal educational institutions (from daycare centers, schools, vocational training and continuing education to social work and extracurricular child, youth, and adult education) (cf. WBGU 2011, 375; BMFSFJ 2020, 508-510). However, many approaches of "education for sustainable development", "environmental education" and "global learning" shift responsibility to individual and private actors by addressing and reducing young people to their role as self-responsible consumers (Eis/Moulin-Doos 2016), without sufficiently addressing the actual social and societal conflict lines and relations of global as well as intra-societal inequality and exploitation of waged employment and care work as well as of nature in educational formats (cf. Eicker et al. 2020; Brand/Wissen 2017; Blühdorn et al. 2020).

Relationship between wage labour, care work, and work for the common good.

Institutional needs and incentive structures which would anchor sustainability goals  both individually and collectively as well as in a socially just manner have so far received little attention. The relationship between wage labour, care work, and work for the common good plays a crucial role here, and its contribution to socio-ecological transformations has remained largely unexplored (see Hemkes et al. 2022). Rarely reflected upon, moreover, is the extent to which education itself (as well as its educational, learning, and knowledge regimes) is part of the problem and contributes significantly to sustaining and safeguarding unsustainable modes of production and living (I.L.A. 2017, pp. 50-59).

Educational research to embed transformative education.

Vocational skills education and training is primarily oriented toward market- and competition-driven competencies. Growth and wealth indicators continue to ignore social inequalities through the exploitation of unpaid or precarious care work (often performed by people with migration histories, women, and people of color). An unsustainable economy and way of life is not only based on the destruction of natural resources, but always also on the exploitation of wage labour, care and community work, as well as on the externalization of costs (globally and on future generations; see Brand/Wissen 2017). Overall, there is a large theoretical and empirical research gap regarding an inequality- and diversity-reflective rationale as well as the feasibility and effectiveness of transformative education with regard to these lines of conflict of social and ecological sustainability (Eicker et al. 2020). Questions of care work, diversity, inequality, participation, and activities for the common good are to be consistently taken up from the perspective of critically reflexive (i.e., political, refugee/migration, and gender-related) educational research on the anchoring of transformative education and examined on the basis of concrete institutional contexts and pedagogical fields.

Political and Trade Union Education in Social and Health Care and the Educational Sector

The focus will be to conceptually and empirically examine lines of conflict between ecological and social sustainability goals for selected fields of transformative education. A special focus will be put on political and trade union education in social and health care and the educational sector. The study of (formal, non-formal and informal) work-related educational processes in the rapidly growing fields of care work (Apitzsch/ Schmidbauer 2011) will thereby link several lines of conflict of socio-ecological transformations, especially questions of gender justice, unequal valuation and exploitation of (paid and unpaid) care work (e.g. education, nursing, care, help) as well as precarious working conditions and lack of (trade union) representation in low-wage sectors. It is important to examine how these lines of conflict frame the practical requirements of transformative education, how they have been further exacerbated in and after the pandemic, and in what ways they are addressed in educational work.

The following structural characteristics of the care sector must be taken into account: specifics and changes in employment relationships (part-time, temporary employment, digitalization, precarization); the social and private division of tasks between professional and domestic/family care work (gender-care/pay-gap); the increasing relevance of voluntary services and solidarity-based public welfare work (welfare-mix); migration and social policy frameworks with regard to staff shortages and exploitation (transnational care arrangements, global solidarity); institutional discrimination with consequences for participation and involvement (educational disadvantages).

Conflict lines of social and ecological sustainability goals

The unifying theoretical approach of the PhD projects is a diversity-reflexive, power-analytical concept of education that connects the entanglement of intersectional inequality dimensions with social participation, political self-empowerment, and (economic, workplace) co-determination (Eicker et al. 2020). With the concept of transformative education, we also connect transdisciplinary approaches of political, intercultural, gender-just and racism-critical education in a post-migrant society, which deal with the role, contextual conditions and tasks of education against the background of social transformations. The empirical perspective of the projects combines overarching questions: What role do approaches and practices of transformative education play in selected fields of practice? To what extent are the conflict lines of social and ecological sustainability goals (de-)thematized and (un-)dealt with? Which (institutional) conditions for success can be worked out for fields of practice, so that education and upbringing can fulfill the tasks assigned to them and contribute to a just and sustainable transformation? What restrictions and barriers do individual and collective actors encounter? How are they dealt with (or reproduced)?

For the research fields and questions we propose, a participatory research approach is beneficial. In the fields of care, the aim is to involve groups that tend to be excluded from participation and to address their concerns. This is also true for trade union education or political youth and adult education. This requires creatively-modified, solidarity-participative and sustainable research approaches (Motzek-Öz/Aden/Westphal 2021).

Possible doctoral projects

Three areas for the analysis of transformative education seem to be particularly relevant to us, which can be addressed in doctoral projects (each with its own, further specified topic). The possible levels of analysis (theoretical-conceptual, empirical, application-related and participatory) are ideally combined in all three fields of investigation. However, individual focal points can also be set.

Vocational qualifications and (further) education in fields of social, educational and/or health care:

• Educational research on vocational schools, especially with a view to the training companies as well as on further vocational qualification.
• Studies on the proportions of the interdisciplinary cross-sectional tasks of political, intercultural and sustainable education and their integration, linkage with (or also prevention/displacement by) the occupation-specific proportions of initial and continuing training courses

Political education and social sustainability as focal points of formal (and informal) education in schools and training:

• To what extent are social sustainability goals as contents and frameworks related to the problem areas of care work and community service work and are corresponding lines of conflict addressed?
• How are conflicting goals of socio-ecological transformations dealt with, ignored or reproduced in school educational institutions?
• What is the significance of labor policy, trade union representation of interests and co-determination in companies?
• What is the role of other civil society actors, engagement in community service, or self-organization in informal educational contexts (e.g., peers, social movements, solidarity collectives, 4-hour league, and the like)?

Union and labor education in social welfare, education, and health care, possibly in comparison to union education in industry:

• How are workers' interests in (paid and unpaid) care work organized and represented?
• How do actors in trade union education address sustainability issues?
• To what extent are conflicts between social and ecological sustainability goals problematized and dealt with?
• How do trade union education actors address the relationship between wage labour, care work and work for the common good in terms of their significance for a socio-ecological transformation?