The educative potential of encountering loss in sustainability transitions

Updated Abstract of the Presented Work: In service of sustainability transitions (STs), people are already facing losses, e.g. in areas where minerals for renewable energy technologies are mined1 and people are giving up habits and learn new ones toward more sustainably2. These losses can be highly affective, as Bogner et al.3 highlight with their work on "transition pain" around anticipated or experienced losses because of STs. We explore how encountering these losses can be educative in enabling reflection and action upon what might be lost. We present two studies, one on potential learning outcomes linked to losses and one on people’s affect around loss and facilitators attend to it. We build on transactional didactic theory4 inspired by the work of Dewey for conceptualising and investigating the educative potential of encountering losses and on the work of Marres6 to address the affective quality of loss by paying attention to the often irreconcilable attachments at stake. We focus on informal learning and observe people in sustainability-related initiatives such as public consultations and activist camps. We analyse their discussions with facilitators in which they talk about (future) losses and track their affect. We use Practical Epistemology Analysis7 for understanding how losses and affect surrounding it are privileged or dismissed. We use the teacher move analysis8 to understand how facilitators steer the privileging and which weight they give affect in them and with which outcome. We provide a typology of how facilitators react to losses of people facing STs (e.g. ignoring, acknowledging, taking action) and describe how their reactions to affect around losses contribute to learning processes. We study how negatively perceived affect such as sadness and exasperation can be educative and how facilitators can realise this educative potential. Losses in sustainability are relevant in the context of local developments in the North where the livelihoods of Indigenous peoples stand against mining operations which are described as enabling more global sustainability. We further work within the research tradition of Didaktik prevalent in the Nordic countries, which focuses on the relationship between teacher (facilitator), student (participant) and content (the sustainability issues and the losses of attachments these involve). 1. Canelas. & Carvalho. The dark side of the energy transition. Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 100, 103096 (2023). 2. Van Poeck & Östman. Learning to find a way out of non-sustainable systems. EIST. 39, 155–172 (2021). 3. Bogner, Kump, Beekman & Wittmayer. Coping with transition pain. EIST. 50, 100806 (2024). 4. Östman, Van Poeck. & Öhman. A transactional theory on sustainability learning. in Sustainable Development Teaching (eds. Van Poeck, Östman & Öhman) 127–139 (Routledge, Oxon, 2019). 5. Shilling. & Mellor. ‘Making things sacred’. J. Class. Sociol. 13, 319–337 (2013). 6. Marres. No issue, no public. (University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 2005). 7. Wickman & Östman. Learning as discourse change. Sci. Educ. 86, 601–623 (2002). 8. Östman, Van Poeck & Öhman. A transactional theory on sustainability teaching. in Sustainable Development Teaching (eds. Van Poeck, Östman & Öhman) 140–152 (Routledge, Oxon, 2019).