Affective Pathways to Sustainability : Emotions, Meaning Making, and Transformation Through Non-Profit-Led Environmental and Sustainability Education

Sammanfattning

This thesis is an explorative study of how primary school students experience place-based Environmental and Sustainability Education programs, with a particular focus on affective engagement and its influence on meaning making. Two non-profit environmental education programs that collaborate with local actors and address locally embedded environmental challenges form the context of this study. Grounded in Sipos et al.’s (2008) Head-Heart-Hands framework for Transformative Sustainability Learning, Dewey’s philosophy of experience, and Pekrun’s Control-Value Theory of emotions, this study examines the conditions under which affective experiences arise in these programs and how students respond to these experiences. It argues that emotions are not secondary outcomes but a central mechanism in sustainability learning. Data from field observations and student interviews identify aesthetic, place-based, and social experiences as key elements that shape students’ emotional experiences. These experiences, in turn, support students’ understanding of and engagement with environmental issues and contribute to their meaning making, wherein local actors play a central role. This leads to emerging identity transformations, in which environmental care is valued and pursued. The findings further show that the affective, cognitive, and practical domains mutually reinforce each other, and that by emphasizing either the cognitive or practical dimension alongside the affective dimension, distinct but complementary pathways towards transformative learning for sustainability are shaped. The study underscores the importance of pedagogical design in shaping students’ emotional engagement and indicates that activating emotions for sustainability learning can be meaningfully cultivated already in primary school, offering concrete insights for program designers and classroom educators.