Tackling wicked problems in teaching and learning : sustainability issues as knowledge, ethical and political challenges

This chapter elaborates how, due to some specific features that characterise many sustainability problems, sustainable development teaching does not only involve questions of knowledge but also ethical and political challenges. Starting from concrete examples and a typology of sustainability problems, the authors describe how factual uncertainty (scientific controversy) and disagreement on values and norms (ethical and political controversy) bring about specific challenges for knowledge production about sustainability problems and possible solutions. Seeking inspiration in proposals for new approaches to science such as ‘post-normal science’, they articulate the ethical and political challenges involved in sustainable development teaching and explore what it could mean to design ‘post-normal education’ for dealing with wicked sustainability problems where facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent