Becoming More Sustainable? Learning Processes of Career Transitioners

• In Event: Doing Transitions: On Making and Becoming Across the Life Course

Abstract

"The interest for sustainable development seems to have moved from an ephemeral trend to a lasting preoccupation of global and intergenerational matter. More than just being informed about the impacts of climate change, Sustainable development is the solution promoted worldwide to encourage skills, values and attitudes that enable to cope with the multiple contemporary crisis. Access to learning about environmental Sustainability however remains unequal. In some situations, it has become an apparent distinction marker (Neckel, 2018), which once again positively values and therefore legitimizes practices, which are known to reproduce social inequality (processes of ‘greentrification’ for example).
More than just a class divide; the discourse of “doing good for the environment” also implies a constructed generation divide, where younger generations are frequently depicted as better informed or at least faster to give up unsustainable practices while midlife and elder adults are seen as not acting fast enough. Besides the argument of being born in a different historical context, the old view of adults considered “beyond learning” or at least beyond mandatory learning is excluding adults from access to environmental education (Jarvis, 2009). Although excluded from formal sustainable development education, adults are still expected to change their way of living and take on responsibility for the sake of this planet. This gap between access to formal education and changing adults’ practices is where the Lifelong learning community comes in and argues for more recognition in non-formal and informal learning environments.
The study investigates the life course of individuals that aspire and conduct a career change to work in a sustainability-labeled job. For these midlife adults, becoming more sustainable by striving for an environmental-friendly job can disrupt original coherences and conflict with earlier practices, norms, and values. Moreover, they have made sustainability such an important topic in their life that it has triggered and is accompanying significant biographical transitions.
The presentation will focus on illustrating non-formal and informal learning practices that were mentioned in the narratives of those individuals to explain and justify their transition to a sustainable-job. These observations will give an insight into how this transition is experienced and articulated by the actors themselves.
"

Author

• Elisa Thevenot, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen