The implementation of environmental and sustainability education (ESE) tends to be perceived as challenging by teachers. One explanation is that the matters of ESE address key societal challenges in their urgency but are characterized by complexity, controversy and uncertainty. Current issues and concerns associated with the climate crisis can be understood as ‘super-wicked problems’, for which no simple solutions. This ambiguity is perceived as overwhelming by teachers and calls for new types of pedagogy. At a time, where the processual nature of individual and societal transformations is tangible and the adoption of a planetary perspective, i.e. engaging with diverse epistemologies and the more-than-human, to tackle the roots of current crises is being emphasized in geography, we want to explore what forms of pedagogy in geography teacher education help addressing and dealing with the described wickedness.

In this context, a common perspective in the international discourse on teacher professionalization is the high value placed on reflection and reflexivity. The appeal of reflection lies in its ability to relate theoretical and experience-based practical knowledge to each other, allowing to explicate implicit knowledge and possibly transforming ways of feeling, knowing and acting. For this to become possible, it is about creating relational spaces of learning, where meaning is created by mediation of diverse experiences, worldviews and positionalities, which are associated with broader narratives and discourses. Transformative and reflexive pedagogies therefore must be sensitive to differences and diversity, hegemony and culturality, counter-futures and utopias, but also to ethical orientation and common ground.

This session seeks to further explore such an idea of geography teacher education in ESE and is concerned with concepts, types and practices of transformative and reflexive pedagogies that move beyond education as a space of affirmation, which keeps the educational and societal status quo in place, to what Joseph (2014) calls a “space of contestation”, that is a space for possibility, exploration and experimentation that encourages prospective teachers to transgress ingrained routines through boundary-crossing, reflexive dialogue and empathy. We invite presentations that are concerned with these issues and concerns and discuss theoretical, conceptual, or empirical research as well as good practices.