Lili-Ann Wolff

• Doctor of Education
• Associate Professor at University of Helsinki

To support new ways of thinking and acting that could create sustainable lifestyles and societies, it is necessary to consider how education attends to the human relationship with the non-human world. In this study, we investigated how the human–nature relationship introduced into Finnish worldview education in the initial comprehensive school year...

S. 2024. Methods and benefits of promoting biodiversity in agricultural areas in Finland. Summary and recommendations of the Finnish Nature Panel to support the planning and decision-making of nature policy. Publications of the Finnish Nature Panel 2A/2024. The Finnish Nature Panel is an independent expert body that supports the planning and decisi...

In a time that many researchers have started to refer to the Anthropocene, the role of higher education (HE), as predominant educational institutions, is most relevant. Humanity faces big challenges with climate change that have become too obvious to be denied, a faster biodiversity loss than ever, growing inequality and poverty problems, and a zoo...

In a time that many researchers have started to refer to the Anthropocene, the role of higher education (HE), as predominant educational institutions, is most relevant. Humanity faces big challenges with climate change that have become too obvious to be denied, a faster biodiversity loss than ever, growing inequality and poverty problems, and a zoo...

This chapter presents and discusses results from data in form of learning diaries that a group of Finnish students wrote on a distance university course arranged during the COVID-19 lockdown. Initially, the course was planned to take place at a World Heritage site, but because of the pandemic, it had to be released online, and in the students’ own...

Please find our article through this link: https://journals.lub.lu.se/nordidactica/article/view/25254/22799

The idea of phenomenon-based learning (PhBL) was introduced into the Finnish core curriculum for basic education in 2014. The Finnish approach has raised interest in many other countries. In Finland, the idea of PhBL is often linked to the traditions of educational psychology, constructivism, problem-based learning (PBL) and inquiry-based learning...

To support new ways of thinking and acting that could create sustainable lifestyles and societies, it is necessary to consider how education attends to the human relationship with the non-human world. In this study, we investigated how the human–nature relationship introduced into Finnish worldview education in the initial comprehensive school year...

The aim of this chapter is to explore the role of ecosystems in sustainability transitions. The chapter begins by identifying global challenges in relation to business and management and comparing the emerging conceptual landscape of sustainability governance and corporate social responsibility. Then, it explores sustainability transitions as a sys...

Sustainability and sustainable development have been on the global political agenda since the end of the 1980s [...]

Climate change is a complex and wicked problem, which needs to be addressed through relevant climate change education. However, the preconditions for combatting climate change differ in different parts of the world, depending on physical, cultural and social circumstances. The diversity of circumstances also influences the implementation of climate...

While the state of the world is becoming ever more unsustainable, transformation and transformative learning have become increasingly relevant and raised attention in various sustainability education discourses. This is obvious in both policy and research. As teacher educators, we have studied how this sustainability and transformative education tr...

Ethics of sustainability education (see Ethics; Sustainability in Curricula (Sustainability Education), Sustainability Education and Awareness) is not a definite concept nor does it have a clear definition. It could be understood in at least three ways. First, it could denote that ethics is the focus of sustainability education, that is, sustainabi...

An ever-growing number of scholars are developing and applying competency frameworks in the context of sustainability education. Despite the strong interest, most of the research has ignored the varying meanings of competency, which can be interpreted as a performed ability, but also as personality development. UNESCO (the United Nations Educationa...

Transformative learning (TL) is a concept that has been popular in adult learning contexts for many decades and lately also in sustainable development and sustainability education contexts (see Sustainable Development; Sustainability in Curricula (Sustainability Education; Education for Sustainable Development). By the end of the 1970s, the America...

Phenomenon-based learning (PhBL) is an indistinct concept with many roots. Its unclear principles are interpreted and implemented in many ways. It is neither a theory nor a method, but it is called an approach. PhBL relates to a pedagogical way of viewing learners, teachers, and knowledge of the world both distinctly and in their context. PhBL has...

The biodiversity decline (see Biodiversity) relates to other urgent sustainable development topics (see Sustainable Development) like climate change (see Climate Change) and is one of the more alarming threats to the world of today (CBD 2000, 2020b; Erdelen 2014). Humans are completely dependent on other biological components for their survival, bu...

Sustainability is a societal request that no one can neglect. It is about living in a way that does not harm life on earth but preserves its various life forms for the future. Thus, sustainability affects all sectors of society, including education. For sustainability to be signigficant in both educational planning and actual school work, the paths...

Please find our Authors Accepted Manuscript through our insitutional web site: https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/fi/publications/climate-change-and-worldview-transformation-in-finnish-education- Summary The climate crisis calls for changes in all areas of human life. One such area is the education sector, which needs to be the target of urgent...

Six experienced academic reviewers and editors explored the nature of quality in academic publication processes in the contexts of sustainability, education for sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This article documents their exploration as a collaborative autoethnography structured around the authors’ personal reflections...

Six experienced academic reviewers and editors explored the nature of quality in academic publication processes in the contexts of sustainability, education for sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This article documents their exploration as a collaborative autoethnography structured around the authors’ personal reflections...

Six experienced academic reviewers and editors explored the nature of quality in academic publication processes in the contexts of sustainability, education for sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This article documents their exploration as a collaborative autoethnography structured around the authors’ personal reflections...

Den här artikeln fokuserar på social hållbarhet som undervisningspraxis, inte som undervisningsinnehåll, närmare bestämt hur den naturvetenskapliga undervisningen kan förverkligas på ett socialt hållbart sätt. Forskningsfrågan är hur lärare som undervisar i naturvetenskaper kan erbjuda elever mer likvärdiga förutsättningar att utveckla scientific l...

Ecologies for Learning and Practice: Emerging Ideas, Sightings, and Possibilities and Political Paradoxes, edited by Ronald Barnett and Norman Jackson. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2020. 240 pp. ISBN 978-1-138-49685-9

Humans have always lived in eras of more or less obvious crises and risks. When Ulrich Beck wrote about the risk society in 1986, he talked about risks as invisibility lacking spatial and temporal boundaries. The environmental risks of the modern society may often appear diffuse, even if, for example, the climate change dilemma has progressively be...

Social sustainability is a dimension of sustainability that has received little attention. Our aims in this article are to create a definition of social sustainability based on a comprehensive literature study, and to discuss the implementation of the concept in higher education settings at theoretical and practical levels. We also aim to answer th...

To understand biodiversity, it is crucial to have knowledge of different species and their life conditions. Biodiversity learning for children starts with observing plants and animals in the neighbourhood. Therefore, it is important that early childhood (EC) teachers know the local nature. There are few studies on species knowledge among EC student...

The field of geography is important for any sustainability education. The aim of geography education is to enable students to understand the environment, its influence on human activity, and how humans influence the environment. In this article we present a study on how the interplay between the three pillars of sustainability thinking (environment...

During the last century, the human way of life has begun to transgress many of the Earth’s biophysical boundaries in an alarming way. The consequences of this are more dramatic and long lasting than ever before. Many researchers even argue that humanity has created a new geological epoch, which they call Anthropocene. Education, even in early child...

Social change requires new educational planning and sustainable teaching methods. Shaping an environment of care with animals as a part of the daily school life may produce such a change. In this article, we present a transdisciplinary study with the aim of exploring whether raising chickens in a classroom could promote learning, especially sustain...

This article discusses the way humans value nature, with a focus on the way they value nature aesthetically. Of particular interest are the values of children and adolescents and the role of aesthetics in scientific studies. The discussion is based on philosophical writings, especially aesthetic sources, and current environmental education empirica...

This article describes an interview study on Finnish upper secondary school students' values of nature. Even if the Finnish adolescents' interest in nature has decreased, most of the interviewees in this study regarded nature as worthy of maintenance. They valued nature for its material, aesthetic, and recreational values, as well as its diversity...

Sustainability is internationally often emphasized as an essential aim of higher education, but more as a principle than on the practical level. This is also obvious in the academic education of primary teachers in Finland. Therefore, it is a great challenge for Finnish teachers to include sustainability in their teaching and everyday life in schoo...

Ett nytt kurskoncept med temat hållbar utveckling har förverkligats under två läsår vid Åbo Akademi. Den tvärvetenskapliga kursen är ett exempel på ett gemensamt utvecklingsarbete mellan lärare från flera ämnen. Den heterogena målgruppen har bestått av studenter med såväl olika ämnes- som kulturell bakgrund. Vid slutseminarierna har alla lärare och...

In the year 2000, Finnish comprehensive education rose unexpectedly and unintendedly to the global agenda. The reason was top achievements in the PISA test. Finland moved from a peripheral position into the core of the global educational dialogue (Frontini, 2009, Uljens, 2009). This international awareness about the educational level in Finland wou...

em>One of the most legendary educational books ever written is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Émile ou de l’Education”. Most obviously Rousseau wrote this book guided by diverse more or less conscious purposes and one of the main problems it presents is paradoxical: Does education have to promote freedom by force? In this article I will, firstly, present...

The history of environmental and Sustainability Education in Finland