Teaching Two-Eyed Seeing in Education for Sustainable Development: Inspirations from the Science|Environment|Health Pedagogy in Pandemic Times

Abstract

This conceptual paper starts by outlining six important concerns of Science|Environment|Health (S|E|H), a new pedagogy of science that has been developed during the last decade by a Special Interest Group of the ESERA community. The paper points out that the importance of these six concerns even increased during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. They play an essential role in preparing future citizens not only for coping with the pandemic but in general with other great challenges that lie ahead of our world. In this way S|E|H is naturally connected to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and the paper discusses how S|E|H work in recent years may inspire education for sustainable development. The six concerns are: (1) the question of curricular change, (2) the role of knowledge in S|E|H contexts, (3) the danger of scientism and the tension between individual and political responsibility, (4) decision-making in S|E|H contexts, (5) the challenge of coping with uncertainty, and (6) the question of scientific holism. Structured by these concerns, the paper reviews recent research of the S|E|H community. These findings are reframed by the Two-Eyed Seeing approach that has recently found growing interest in the S|E|H community. This new approach distinguishes between the scientific image and the life-world image on an ontological basis, which helps to disentangle the six concerns and to provide a framework for tackling them in teacher education and educational research—in S|E|H contexts and also in education for sustainable development.