| dc.description.abstract | Aim: This research is situated in education as sustainable development. It, therefore, aims
to embrace the ‘‘wickedness’’ of sustainable development by allowing for
qualitatively different ways of understanding to emerge from the participants’
descriptions. The selected group of participants come from the South-East European
region, which research describes as having a unique structure in terms of culture,
politics, economy, and education in comparison to the rest of Europe (including
Sweden). These people now live in a society which research describes as sustainably
developed society. Therefore, it is assumed that the qualitatively different ways in
which South-Eastern European immigrants in Sweden understand the phenomena
embrace the ‘‘wickedness’’ of said phenomena by providing unique points of view.
Theory: The conceptual framework of this research is the overarching notion that guides the
entire research process. The concept of ‘‘wicked problems’’ is, therefore, selected as
the sensitising concept of the whole study. However, while this concept does
encourage explorative research, it does not necessarily provide a scholarly support for
the way data is interpreted and presented. This is where the theoretical framework
comes at play as the structure which supports the way theory is related to the data
analysis. Therefore, research acknowledges the use of phenomenography as a theory
of human cognition and understanding on the basis of its epistemological and
ontological assumptions.
Method: This research is explorative in nature, and it is conducted under the methodological
implications of phenomenography as a research approach. Therefore, individual
phenomenographic semi-structured interviews is the data collection method of choice.
And data interpretations are fished out from the pool of meaning and presented in the
outcome space of the research in the form of categories of description.
Results: The participants displayed an extensive awareness and an array of understandings
about the complexity and ‘‘wickedness’’ of sustainable development and its
educational equivalent. The qualitatively different ways of understanding were
organised in six categories of description. Hence, sustainable development and/ or
educational forms in relation to sustainable development were understood as: a
responsibility, a concern of the rich and developed, a capitalistic propaganda, a core
of Swedish society, a holistic approach, and a wicked problem. This research
essentially shows an ‘‘acceptance of coexisting ontologies’’ that illustrates how a
specific group forms the knowledge and understandings of complex phenomena
against a background of different actors and social spaces (including education). | en_US |
