A critical discourse analysis of learning for sustainabilty

Abstract

Sustainability is a major challenge for society. A capitalist mode of production is neither compatible with ecological preservation nor the meeting of human needs. We are currently experiencing crises which threaten the survival of humanity, not only as stable societies, but as a species. Education is a key mechanism for enacting social and ecological reorganisation. However, the roles schools have to play - as sites for the reproduction of our values, and our capacity to take part in production - are sites for disagreement. This paper examines how these disagreements materialise in the discourse around the Scottish sustainability education agenda, Learning for Sustainability (LfS), from a critical, Marxist perspective.
When considering policy, language mediates between ideas and social practices. Following Foucault, systems of these mediations present themselves as discourses. Discourses are products of specific social and economic organisation, and both shape and are shaped by social practices. Sustainability discourses are multiple and varied, interacting with educational discourses as well as others - disagreements concerning the roles of social institutions manifest themselves as disagreements between discourses.
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is an approach to research that aims to “describe, interpret and explain” (Roger et al, 2005:366) the production and reproduction of the social world through language. The approach used in this study is Fairclough’s (2001) three stage model: description, interpretation and explanation. The first stage is concerned with a linguistic analysis of the text, the second stage with mediating the production, distribution and consumption of the text and the final stage with examination of the interaction between the text and larger social structures and practices.
The analysis centres on three policy documents in ‘conversation’ with each other, the One Planet Schools Working Group Learning for Sustainability report (2012), the Scottish Government response to the report (2013) and the Vision 2030+ report by the Learning for Sustainability National Implementation Group (2016). It aims to explore the conceptualisation of LfS, how social organisation is envisaged in the texts and how compatible these conceptualisations are with a sustainable future. It makes no policy proposals, instead outlining the fundamental contradictions inherent in the policy framework and the assumptions of its framers. It proposes that the realisation of the radical implications of learning for sustainability require the expropriation of an education system that is currently, fundamentally, for capitalism.