Education for Hope in Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous Times
‘In a single hour vast tracts of shaded woodland became a jumble of torn trees and upturned soil, exposed to the glare of the summer sun. Such land-clearing events are rare, but forests exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of disaster. I’m told that the Chinese character for ‘catastrophe’ is the same as that which represents the word ‘opportunity’. And, the blowdown, while catastrophic, presented opportunities for many species.’ (Wall Kimmerer, 2003: 89).
In the context of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Stein, 2021) what kinds of education for hope might support children’s and young people’s critical engagement in local and global issues?
In the spirit of exploring the possibilities of hope further, this short article focuses on the area of global citizenship and sustainabilityrelated education. It will briefly open by sharing commonalities across pedagogical approaches that take up the concept and act of hope more critically, and close by offering reflective questions for educators, with suggestions for further reading.
Perhaps it is a kind of hope that is grounded in the present, in future reimagining(s), in ethical solidarity, and an acknowledgement of our deep entanglement with the living metabolism of planet earth1 our singular home (UNESCO, 2021); a hope that engages with complex root causes and lived realities of multiple overlapping crises in critically reflexive and contextually relevant ways.
As McCloskey notes, ‘Hope can fire our collective imagination and critical consciousness as a mainspring to activism and intervention in the world.’ (2025: 3).
Commonalities across critical pedagogical approaches to hope include:
- Acknowledging the context of a ‘seamless single story of progress, development and human evolution’ (Andreotti, V.D.O., 2021b
- Relating to social and ecological justice and the wellbeing of people and planet
- Using participatory, action-orientated and inquiry-based learning processes
- Exploring diverse worldviews and perspectives
- Practising grounding in the present with opening up possibilities for change (relational, embodied, response-able 2)
- Experiencing ‘struggle’ in different forms (dialogical, selfreflexive, open-ended)
- Engaging individual and collective agency, action and activism Looking for lifelong and life-wide learning and unlearning.
1 See ‘Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness’, in Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. 2021a
2 See ‘Crossing Borders’ in 2 Depth Education “Depth Education and the Possibility of GCE Otherwise, 2021b.
Source: Andreotti, V. 2021a & 2021b., Atif, A. (2025)., Bourn, D. 2021., Bryan. A. and Mochizuki,Y., 2024., Giroux, H.A. 2025., Meade, E. 2025.
Whilst engaging in the concept and act of hope more critically reflect upon:
- What kinds of education for hope might you explore further and why?
- How might you provide generative spaces for engaging in diverse worldviews and perspectives?
- In what ways can you facilitate individual and collective agency?
- How might you support learners’ practice grounding in the present in order to relate differently?
- In what ways can you support learners in navigating complex root causes and lived realities of local and global issues?
As Chief Ninawa Hini Kui affirms, ‘The future depends much less on the images we project ahead than on our capacity to repair relations and build relationships differently in the present.’ (Andreotti et al, 2023: 73.
An invitation for further reading:
Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future. d’Abreu, C., Belgeonne, C., Bourn, D. and Hatley, J. (2025) ‘Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future’. DERC Research Paper 24. London: UCL Institute of Education.
Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2021a) ‘Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism’ , London: Penguin Random House.
Development Education and Hope. McCloskey, S. (2025). (ed) ‘Development Education and Hope’. ‘Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review’ , Vol. 41, Autumn. Centre for Global Education, Belfast.
Link to and download the full reference list here
