Track 1: Education as sustainable democratisation
Chaired by Carl Anders Säfström, Mälardalen University Sweden (carl.anders.safstrom@mdh.se), Leif Östman, Uppsala University, Sweden (leif.ostman@uu.se), Niclas Månsson, Mälardalen University (niclas.mansson@mdh.se), and Johan Öhman, Örebro University (johan.ohman@hi.oru.se).
Democracy and education are theoretically as well as empirically interwined in such a way as one can have
education without democracy but not democracy without education. In this track we want to explore in what ways
democratic education is necessary for the very understanding of education and particularly education as sustainable
democratisation. One targeted field concerns the relation between education and the question of how we can deal with,
solve or agree on moral issues concerning sustainable democratisation in a world of moral differences: Is it
necessary to create some kind of moral meta-language through which all moral disagreement can be handled and solved
once and for all; or do the possibilities for sustainable democratisation lie in the moral differences that
characterise a modern pluralistic society? A related targeted field concerns environmental education (EE) since one
can trace tendencies of a move from a science-oriented discourse being based in scientific rationality aiming at a
specific behaviour modification to a pluralistic discourse aiming at free opinion-making and democratic action
competence. Such a move leads to interesting questions such as: Is it possible to create a commitment for important
environmental and developmental issues without teaching a specific Right and Good? Can education for sustainable
development (ESD) fulfil the requirements of a pluralistic education or is it rather another top-down concept
created by politicians and experts turning education to a political tool to create a predetermined social and
economical order?
The track deals especially with questions that open the field for critical inquiry into the relation between
environmental ethics, politics and education.
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Mälardalens University is the first University in the world
to become enviromentally certified according to the
international standard ISO 14001.
