Affective Contradictions and Narratives of Change: A Critical, Cultural‐Historical Approach to Hope and Action in Education for Sustainability

ABSTRACT The available scientific evidence shows that, unless urgent and drastic action is taken, critical tipping points in the climate and the ecosystems that support human civilization may be crossed within our students’ lifetimes. In such a historical conjuncture, teaching and learning about sustainability can hardly be disentangled from affectivity and hope. What is our role as science educators when we teach about climate change at a time in which the window to a safe future is closing? What sort of dialogical spaces can we create that shall allow students to approach the climate crisis as a subject matter while preserving a sense of agency and hope? As part of the special issue Centering Affect and Emotion Toward Justice and Dignity in Science Education, in this study, we investigate whether and the ways in which upper secondary students position themselves as meaningful actors when considering social, scientific, and technological solutions to the climate change problem in the context of science education. Building upon critical and cultural‐historical perspectives, we theorize affect as inherently related to the development of societal, collective motives, and to how these motives become instantiated, made relevant, and addressed in situated practical activity through narratives and discourses about the past, present, and future. Drawing on interviews with upper‐secondary school students, our analyzes identify formal contradictions that emerge in the students’ narratives and how these relate to equally contradictory affective configurations of hoping and caring. A lack of concrete pathways and understanding of the political dimensions of the climate crisis seem key to a prevalent lack of agency and hope.