Justice, What a Dream!—Mapping Intersections of Sustainability and Inclusion

Abstract

This paper takes on the important concepts of inclusion and sustainability, in both their broad and discursive understandings, to map out the interrelations that teachers, who work within different areas of the Austrian school system, make between different, key aspects of their work and organization. The complex intersections of school organization, sustainability, and inclusion were analyzed following a situational analysis approach that made use of different types of mapping (e.g., messy, situational, positional) of data gathered from semi-structured interviews with a teacher-training student and teachers positioned across the Austrian school system, some of whom with experience in classrooms with, for example, refugee, d/Deaf, and neurodivergent students. The findings from these data display ways of being oriented towards sustainable and responsible as well as inclusive engagement, especially within educational spheres. By and large, what emerged from the data was the clear result that school organization as a whole plays one of the biggest roles in determining whether or not non-mandatory subjects such as “sustainability” are given space and time in the classroom. Therefore, if we want to promote topics on sustainability and a focus on climate justice in education, efforts need to be made to bring these topics into the official curriculum.