Exploring the shifts to existing schooling practices that students experience in open schooling practices

Abstract

The rhetoric-reality gap is a long-standing debate in environmental and sustainability education (ESE), which exemplifies the barriers that ESE initiatives face due to the contradictory purposes of mainstream schooling and the visions of environmental education. It is known to disrupt the teaching habits of teachers. In this study, we investigated whether students also faced disruptions when they engaged in open-ended problem-solving ESE practices called open schooling, implemented using the LORET method (Locally Relevant Teaching). It involves connecting education to identifying, exploring, and tackling sustainability problems in the school or in the local community. The exploratory case study uses the pragmatist lens of John Dewey to identify points of shift or friction in students’ existing learning habits as a result of engaging in open schooling practices. Students experienced three prominent shifts: (1) freedom and responsibility to select tasks, goals, and outcomes, (2) encountering the authentic and practical nature of the projects—long work processes, uncertain timelines, and unclear instruction, (3) problems with group dynamics exacerbated by uncertainty in other areas of the projects. Uncertainty emerged as a common denominator in all the shifts in students’ learning habits. Implications for teachers and students are discussed.