Environmental Education Research

Environmental and Sustainability education research in the Nordic countries: Convergence, fault lines and diffractions

Purpose and focus

This will be the second Special Issue of Environmental Education Research to focus on research in the Nordic Region. In 2010, the first (Volume 16, Issue 1): Democracy and Values in Environmental and Sustainability Education: Research contributions from Denmark and Sweden, showcased initial efforts to draw on different positions within Nordic ESE research and engage an international audience. It was an important stepping stone for the development of the field in the Nordic countries and for the dialogues around Nordic positions and contributions to the field in a wider international setting. However, while 16(1) was originally intended to include a greater variety of Nordic research, it ended up with a narrower focus on Danish and Swedish research. 15 years have passed, the field has grown rapidly and massively internationally, and the Nordic region is no exception. 16(1) had a focus on the role of democracy in ESE, and since then new societal challenges have emerged that has significantly altered the discussions of ESE, democracy and environmental issues in the Nordic region and beyond. We thus find it timely to develop a new Special Issue that emphasise the traditions, contributions and developments across the whole of the Nordic region, articulating a new generation of insights into a dynamic research environment and building on efforts and ambitions to reach out to an international audience. At the same time, we anticipate the SI will discuss the merits, potentials and pitfalls of Nordic ESE research and practices. Thus, in this SI, we aim to engage with perspectives that bring important critical edges to ESE in the region, and by extension, foster dialogue more broadly. This includes research that addresses global inequalities, colonial legacies, and ethical-political dimensions of sustainability. We invite contributions that critically interrogate how Nordic ESE research grapples with issues of coloniality, power relations, and epistemic justice, and how these shape curriculum, pedagogy, and teacher education.

The ESE research community in the Nordic countries

During the last decade there has been a surge in the number of active ESE researchers and the development of a range of national research networks in, for example, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark. A Nordic research network that hosts biannual conferences as well as a range of seminars and PhD-courses has also been developed, and we anticipate this new SI can be seen as part of that work, helping formally establish the Nordic research network as a democratic institution in the fall of 2025 at its network conference in Gothenburg.

As context, in the Nordic countries (counting Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Åland Islands), there is widespread awareness of the increasingly unsustainable state of our planet, and the nation states are all steady supporters of the sustainable development agenda promoted by United Nations. At the same time, they are high-income countries with a massive carbon footprint and consumption patterns that are far from sustainable. While green transitions take place, there are also tensions, paradoxes and contradictions in general political priorities and policies with regard to sustainability (Kardyb et al., 2025) (Kardyb, Lysgaard, & Bengtsson, 2025).

However, one should tread carefully when attempting to draw a generalized broader picture of environmental and sustainability education in the Nordic countries. Although the countries in the region show striking similarities in approaches to education, curriculum and pedagogy, they continue to be informed by different cultural and geographical points of reference, including but not limited to how and why to include sustainability in educational designs and activities (Jónsson et al., 2021). In other words, the region exhibits a wide spectrum of different approaches to environmental and sustainability education emerging from different ideological, theoretical and political trajectories. A key feature of the SI then will require striking a balance between presenting regionally generalizable trends and tendencies while also reflecting and qualifying these commonalities in relation to country-specific characteristics.

Equally, Nordic countries are in a somewhat paradoxical situation when considering each societies’ relationship to sustainability. On the one hand, the Nordic countries pride themselves in being ‘front runners’ when it comes to taking political action on environmental and sustainability challenges (Jónsson et al., 2021, p. 7). The region has advocated the agendas internationally for decades and ambitious political reforms mark the Nordic national political landscapes of the mid-2020s (Jónsson et al., 2024). On the other, the general way of living in the region is far from sustainable. Average consumption patterns in the region place the Nordic countries among the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the world, per capita. This paradox, more than anything, underscores the role of and need for education in achieving sustainable transition of the region, not just in policy terms, but in everyday life practices as well.

Generally, environmental and sustainability education in the Nordic countries registers within the full range of formal educational levels as well as in non-formal and informal practices. From early childhood education to all branches of primary, secondary, vocational and higher education, as well as in lifelong learning activities, it is possible to find emphases that link education to sustainability agendas (Jónsson et al., 2020).

As an overall framing of the educational systems in the Nordic countries then, it is important to recognise that all the Nordic countries share a foundational investment in the idea of a welfare society, where the states offer free education, healthcare and social security to all citizens. This basic model is a strong influence on how the educational systems have developed and are framed. Few students attend private schools (with an interesting exception of Sweden’s growing sector of private institutions) and these are also to a large degree, state controlled, in that all students should receive access to the same basic education and quality should be comparable between all schools. To illustrate, in the Nordic countries, primary and lower secondary schooling is a non-divided run until 10^th grade with children starting the year they turn 6. After that young people can choose their educational career that will continue to be fully funded by the state.

These similarities draw on a shared understanding of the importance of education and the state as the key actor in ensuring and developing strong educational institutions and programs (Buchardt et al., 2013). Nevertheless, the Nordic countries are also marked by vast differences in their geographical contexts, from the endless lakes of Finland to the arctic regions of Norway, the volcanos that shape Iceland, the ice sheet on Greenland and the flat agricultural landscape of Denmark. The region is also home to different indigenous cultures of Greenland (Inuit) and Norway, Sweden and Finland (Sami) that offers substantially different and understudied perspectives on ESE. Still on an ideological level, and to a certain degree linguistic and culturally, there are many shared traits and arguably also levels of shared identities across the Nordic countries (Kangas & Kvist, 2018).

In response, we note several long-established and highly esteemed academic education research environments now exist in the Nordic countries, and these have made - and continue to make – their marks on the international discourses on environmental and sustainability education as well as inform practices in the region (e.g., through the Nordic Council, EU and ECER NW30 communities).

Characteristically, the research environments of the region are marked by a pronounced collaborative spirit, with many national and inter-Nordic research networks forming around the environmental and sustainability education agenda over the past 10 years, e.g., the beforementioned Nordic Research Network for Environmental and Sustainability Education (Tryggvason, n.d.). It is another ambition for this SI to present and discuss some of the theoretical contributions from these research environments – the oft-cited as well as the emerging.

Prominent and emerging Nordic ESE research perspectives

Globally, and in the Nordic countries, environmental and sustainability education often have roots in national approaches to environmental education (Gough & Scott, 2003; Mogensen & Schnack, 2010). A shared characteristic in the Nordic countries is that much environmental and sustainability education combines approaches to environmental education with civics and citizenship education emphasizing democratic values and participatory approaches (Carlsson & Lysgaard, 2024; Jónsson et al., 2024; Kardyb et al., 2025). Historically, Danish and Swedish educational research engagement with the concept of sustainable development has had the strongest international impact with concepts such as action competence and the pluralist teaching tradition (Poeck & Lysgaard, 2016). Yet, since the mid-2010s, there has been surge in attention to environmental and sustainability education across the Nordic countries more broadly, and in national educational research environments, which has fostered new perspectives and exciting collaborations on topics such as sustainability-oriented school development and assessment, the role of Bildung in environmental and sustainability education, Perspectives on affective and emotional aspects of ESE and questions about ESE in the Anthropocene. Emerging research also critically examines the intersections of ESE with global justice discourses and postcolonial/decolonial/biopolitical perspectives. These contributions interrogate how Nordic educational systems, often seen as progressive, may inadvertently reproduce colonial power relations and global inequalities through sustainability and citizenship discourses.

Alongside from these key foci of research, a range of other established and emerging strands within Nordic ESE research rightfully deserve mention. For instance, for years Finnish scholars have been advocating and advancing holistic approaches to climate change education and worldview education, making internationally acclaimed contributions to both theory and practice development in these regards (Zilliacus & Wolff, 2021). Nordic research on global perspectives in environmental and sustainability education would also merit mentioning, contributing state-of-the-art critical Bildung-infused considerations on global citizenship and cosmopolitanism in education (Kvamme, 2020; Tryggvason et al., 2025). This SI will invite contributions relating to these themes, but also those going across or beyond such established perspectives.

Main themes and contributors

The group of guest editors represent a range of Nordic countries and as such we welcome diversity and dynamic perspectives on the current state of ESE in the Nordic countries. We do, however, also acknowledge the importance of the continued interest in and critiques of established positions and, building on the 2010 SI, we encourage contributions to relate to the rich history of Nordic ESE research and practice. Themes for the contributions could relate to research on:

• established positions in ESE, their history, development and potential future paths in each country,
• emerging positions and their role in Nordic and international ESE research and practice,
• shared perspectives on ESE and its research across the Nordic regions,
• geographical, political, cultural differences across the region and the role of such in ESE research and practice,
• relationships/intersections between Nordic perspectives and local and global issues in ESE, e.g. Indigenous matters, in/equality, epistemic justice, praxis development, coloniality…
• links between traditions of ESE and neighbouring areas, e.g. nature and outdoor education (friluftsliv),
• travelling approaches/theory, such as: how Nordic ESE has imported theoretical approaches and adapted/recontextualized them in a Nordic context (e.g. German didactics, American pragmatism, posthuman perspectives, postcolonial approaches, etc); how Nordic ESE and its research confirms and challenges Nordic exceptionalism; how societal critique developed and expressed within Nordic ESE and its research.

Authors interested in contributing to this SI on these topics or who wish to propose others addressing the spirit and scope of the SI are invited to send an extended abstract to Jonas Lysgaard ([email protected]).

The extended abstract should include:

• a title,
• a preliminary list of authors,
• a summary of the paper (max. 1,000 words) placing the work in the context of Nordic ESE, outlining the main arguments, research method and preliminary results (if available) along with relevant peer-reviewed academic references that support the work.

The Guest Editors will review the abstract in order to evaluate if a full paper is suitable for submission to this SI, or, for example, might be better redirected to the standard refereeing route.

Important: authors will need to provide proof of English editing or/and proofreading when submitting full manuscripts.

Guest Editors

The Guest Editors of this SI have worked together for more than fifteen years in this field, and have contacts with researchers in various areas of environmental education, e.g. universities, and public and civil research organizations, educators’ groups. We are trying to reach researchers with not only established careers but also emerging scholars. Jonas Lysgaard will be the lead Guest Editor. Lysgaard will be the contact person for the abstract submission and early communication with the potential authors. The editorial will be written by the six Guest Editors together.

Jonas Lysgaard, Associate Professor, Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark. Lysgaard has worked within the field since 2009 with a special focus on theoretical development, non-formal education and links between national, regional and global ESE research perspectives. He is an EER board member and has co-edited an SI for the Journal.

Nanna Jordt Jørgensen, Associate Professor at Copenhagen University College. Works with a focus on ESE challenges in the global south and across a range of pre-school perspectives.

Ole Andreas Kvamme, Associate Professor, Department of Teacher Education and School Research, Oslo University, Norway. Kvamme works on normative and ethical issues within ESE with a special focus on Bildung aspects and didactics.

Elin Sæther, Associate Professor Department of Teacher Education and School research, Oslo University, Norway. Sæther researches sustainability education and diversity education across secondary schooling and teacher training.

Louise Sund, Professor, School of Education, Culture and Communication, Mälardalen University and Visiting Professor, School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, Örebro University, Sweden. Sund has a wide range of research interests covering postcolonial and decolonial perspectives on pedagogical tensions in the intersections between environmental and sustainability education and global citizenship education.

Beniamin Knutsson, Associate Professor, Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Drawing on biopolitical theory and postfoundational political thought, Knutsson's research explores how power and inequality are entangled with ESE.

Lars Demand-Poort, Associate Professor, Institute of Learning, Ilisimatusarfik - University of Greenland. Demand-Poort has worked extensively on science education and links to sustainability issues across the Nordic region.

Essi Aarnio-Linnanvuori, University Lecturer, Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University. Aarnio-Linnanvuori works on a range of ESE issues related both to the Finnish context and beyond focusing on teacher and student perspectives and challenges.

Ólafur Páll Jónsson, Professor, School of Education, University of Iceland. Jónsson has done extensive work on political, philosophical and policy-oriented perspectives on ESE across the Nordic region.

Dissemination and target audiences

The special issue will present insights into current work and perspectives on Nordic ESE research to EER’s international readership. A consideration among the guest editors is that we have an ambition to engage different segments of the global ESE research communities though the SI, both as audience and through the call as potential contributors. Thus it is an ambition that the SI will:

• Showcase Nordic ESE research or research on the Nordic perspectives for a global audience
• Engage neighbouring fields in the Nordic countries and beyond (e.g. science education, outdoor education, didactics, etc.)
• Engage the more than 300 members of the Nordic Research Network on ESE
• Engage the more than 500 members of ECER Network 30.