På väg mot pluralism : Elever i situerade samtal kring hållbar utveckling

Sammanfattning: This dissertation highlights and discusses some essential aspects of young people’s meaning-making deliberations on future issues and sustainable development. In the first two of four articles, recurring components of the discussion that appear to be important for its progression are both identifi ed and illustrated. In the two latter articles these components are then used to study how the identities of the conversers are constituted through the deliberations and to describe how the individual participants assume their place in them as free political subjects.The dissertation’s theoretical starting point has been the pragmatist arguments and positions mainly found in Dewey’s concept of experience, Rorty’s anti-representationalistic perspective of meaning-making and Wittgenstein’s discussions relating to language games. A methodological attempt developed from these arguments is transaction analysis – originally formulated by Wickman and Östman and later called practical epistemology. The study begins with this analysis and develops it further. The empirical data included in the dissertation’s studies is based on recorded interviews and students discussions. The students who participated either attended upper secondary school or a folk high school.The results of the dissertation’s four articles show that human confl icts of interest and value relations should be regarded as central stages in students’ discussion processes on sustainable development. The dissertation also shows how these components can be used to study pluralism and how students’ collective identity is constituted.In the dissertation’s conclusion, a number of tools are developed that are suitable for research where one intends to further analyse how students create meaning about future issues and sustainable development through discussion. The conclusion also describes eight educational points that need to be taken into account when creating constructive discussion situations that support students’ learning in the field of sustainable development.