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Active Student Participation imagines learning as a shared venture between educators and students. It invites students to support, empower, and challenge each other’s learning, as well as helping them to be co-creators in planning, facilitating, and evaluating courses within higher education.

This companion aims to inspire those who want to approach new ways of learning in order to create a better course, as well as those who are out to challenge conventional forms of teaching and learning norms. It summarises a range of experiences in Swedish higher education and provides concrete examples of how students and educators can learn together. By reading this companion, you will meet a variety of voices and perspectives - from students and educators - both via text and through links to a rich collection of media.

Together, these voices tell us about a significant shift in roles within higher education that creates teaching and learning spaces with the opportunity to do things differently. In essence, Active Student Participation is about transformative learning, succinctly exemplified by one of the student contributors to this companion: “To experience any other form of education now would feel like nothing less than a fundamental step into the past.”

This article draws on the emerging speculative realist philosophical movement in order to develop new understandings of the issues and content of education that needs framing and reframing within environmental and sustainability education (ESE) research. We argue for the potential of using speculative realist concepts such as correlationism, hyperobjects, the strange stranger, undermining, overmining and duomining in order to develop a dark pedagogy that could draw on insights from speculative realism and object-oriented ontology in particular in order to develop further key concepts and discussions within ESE. Based on inspiration from speculative realism, our conception of a dark pedagogy could strive to: develop an understanding of the hyperobjects and the strangeness of objects of education at the center of ESE. Our conception of dark pedagogy insists on the inherent withdrawnness of the objects at play in ESE, and envisions to develop a sensibility towards eco-, geo-, infra- and chrono-factors in ESE and make explicit the potential educational implications of speculative realisms.

This paper develops a theory of transgressive learning (t-learning) as it was experimented with in the International Science Council t-learning network. The method applied is a diffractive reading of conceptions of transgression in academic publications emerging from different cases. The results show that there can be no definite conduct to or understanding of transgression, as transgression itself entails a subversion of rules, contexts, and borders. Instead, the results document several overarching categorical positions and axiomatic understandings of transgression that emerge from the background of context-specific wicked sustainability issues. Transgressive learning can be understood as a set of contextually diverse techniques and practices that attempt to bring about change through and in learning. Transgressive learning can result in experiential learning excesses where the excess is the very source of difference and makes change possible. The diversity of conceptions of transgressive learning open up new entry points for engaging with sustainability-oriented learning and education that is open to change rather than to reproducing unsustainable social structures and dynamics.

Assumptions are readily made about the global nature and discourse of education for sustainable development. This study challenges assumptions made about structural power as expressed through Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) policy and politics of education. Focusing on the concept of sustainable development (SD) and ESD, the research examined the culturally contextualized question: How should we understand the relationship between these policy concepts, structural power, hegemony and the hegemonic discourses that articulate them? A case analysis of the political and educational history of Vietnam is used to highlight how assumptions on the hegemonic potential of SD and ESD may or may not be appropriate, or adequate, for understanding that relationship at the depth required for critical purposes. The findings of a discourse analysis of relevant policy documents suggests the meanings of these concepts are not fully determined and cannot be seen as expressions of a determinable overall state of power relations or hegemony. Instead, they are suggestive of the limits of hegemonic power and allow for the emergence of a space of contestation. This space is at play in the political contestation of the meaning of SD and ESD in Vietnamese policy.

This chapter interrogates the concept of nature as central to the understanding of education, learning, and the position of the child in education. Based on a problematization of the concept of nature, a philosophy of education without nature is outlined. This philosophy is substantiated by a conception of object-oriented learning, where learning is reconceived as a primarily aesthetic process of unappropriation. In sum, this chapter aims to develop an alternate ecological outlook on education that wants to open up processes of learning as to foster nearness and compassion with other objects.

This paper engages in a theoretical reflections on the possibility of education to transgress a global status quo as it is maintained in and through education. The paper is based on the work of the T-learning project, an international transformative knowledge network funded by the International Social Science Council. The project consists of 9 case studies, including cases from Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Malawi, Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. As a knowledge network, the different cases experimented with contextually grounded techniques and methods of transformative and transgressive education that aimed create moments of optimal disruption of unstainable ways of being. The conceptual and theoretical resources brought to these experimentations were as diverse as the contexts as they were taking place in, including among others post-colonial, transformative and expansive notions of learning and education. However, throughout the project there has been a continuous exchange between cases been going on, collectively constructing t-learning mochilas. Mochillas commonly refer to artisan knapsacks created by various indigenous groups from Colombia. Consequently, T-learning Mochillas came to refer to personal objects, concepts and experiences, including techniques, pedagogical principles and methods that emerged and were shared in the network. The paper do be developed presents a theoretical engagement with the authors T-learning Mochilla. In particular, it engages with a theoretical reflection on transgressive forms of learning that aim to foster existential forms of challenging hegemonic forms of knowledge and knowledge production. It draws on transcultural differences and similarities in working with t-learning in order to tease out how transgressive learning might be reconceptualized in a Northern European context.Transgression, as a form of learning, is understood as to relate to an engagement with a limit. As Foucault highlights it involves “the narrow zone of a line where it displays the flash of its passage [… and it has] its entire space in the line that it crosses”. (Foucault, 1998, p.27). For learning that is envisioned to disrupt a status quo, transgression can be seen to engage with the limits established by hegemony. Hegemony might here be understood as a form of sedimented ideology, that has become incorporated into social practices to such an extent that it is no longer is doubted and, even more problematic, that we might no longer be aware of it being a limited ideological construction of the world and not the world as it is (cf. Laclau & Mouffe, 1985; Laclau 1990). Transgression as learning then directs the learner against a limit that is no longer apparent to thought. It dives into the depth of experience in order to encounter there resonances or dissonances that disrupt the taken for granted assumptions that the subject projects in its apprehension. However, if this limit is no longer itself apparent, the apparent flash of passage becomes an inverted lightning strike as described by. It becomes a flash of an oversaturated blackness (Thacker, 2011; Morton, 2016) in the encounter of which the learning subjects looses itself (Bataille 1988).What I am to develop in the paper is how to conceive of the implications for understanding the learning subject, as human, when it encounters this oversaturated blackness in transgressive learning. As it will be argued the subject as learner itself encounters its non-presence to itself in this moment of transgression. Consequently, the whole project of the Enlightenment, as crucial for education but also for the production of humanity becomes threatened as in transgression the subject is unable to define its own limit. Drawing on Object-oriented ontology (e.g. Harman 2011), I aim to provide a reconception of the learning subject engaging with transgression. In particular, I will reconceive the limit of the subject drawing on the work of Morton (2013, 2016, 2017). Breaking with the laws of non-contradiction and excluded middle, the subject as learner encounters itself as both human and non-human in the process of learning. As education is with Kant not building upon but the very condition of humanity, the effort is to develop a pre-human notion of education. This pre-human notion of education is to be developed drawing on alternative ontologies and cosmologies as they were brought into play in the t-learning project. To be pre-human plays with the Kantian condition for and promise of education embracing the strange openness of the project of education. Transgression shows to the subject as learner, that it is always both human and non-human at the same time, is keeping the promise of humanity arrivant. As a result, in the pre-human notion of education there is a pluriverse of the human (Latour, 2004), as well as an ecological displacement of the learner (Bengtsson, 2018).In its effort to outline a pre-human notion of education is to allow for educational processes to, once again, become riskful for the constitution of the social. Where the learner can, once again, encounter the openness of being a subject, transgressing sedimented forms of apprehending the world and ultimately itself.

Current educational and especially didactical approaches are struggling to cope with sustainability and climate change issues. Sustainability issues in education do not respect disciplinary borders, compartmentalizations, and are not reducible to particular subjects of education, agendas on national education policies, nor do they fit into neatly definable categories like environmental or social issues. More significantly, sustainability issues challenge key assumptions underlying educational thought per se, as they not problems which can be solved alone by improving human learning and apprehension. That is, they are not reducible to discourse, practice, and knowledge. The way in which climate change appears to humans does not exhaust the issue or problem at hand, and, as opposed to various social challenges, we cannot simply choose to apprehend or engage with these processes differently and thereby (dis)solve them. Hence, climate change illustrates the inability of an idealist account of education and social response to sustainability issues. The very notion of climate change highlights the idealist anthropocentric fallacy to assume that a thing (the climate) is reducible to human apprehension (for us the climate is changing), as the climate has been there before humans and has been changing before humans are able to account for it (e.g. the ice ages). Education and social responses to global warming struggle for approaches to address those aspects of things that are beyond the possibility of  human apprehension (climate without/before humans) and by their exclusion (reduction of climate to a climate for us) can be seen to reproduce structures in human practice that amplify the prevalence of sustainability issues. In this paper, we propose that the educational challenges of addressing issues like climate change a grounded in the subject-orientedness of education; the tendency to reduce an issue to the way in which it appears, affects and is manipulated by the human subject as learner. Hence, the issue is reduced to how it is an issue for the human subject, assuming a somewhat exclusive and self-centred (transcendental) position of the human to know and control an issue in practice. In education, this entails the reduction of an issue to a content of education that is to be engaged with by a student and under the didactical intervention of the teacher. As in the subject-oriented didactical triangle, the sustainability issues is reduced to a content of education that has a determinable educative potential (Bildungssubstanz/Bildungsgehalt) in relation to a human learner as well as to the teachers' disciplinary knowledge.

This presentation aims to introduce an alternate didactical approach, an object-oriented didactics. The axiomatic starting point is here a reintroduction of the Kantian notion of the thing-in-itself that is not reducible to or congruent with a thing-for-us. Consequently, an object-oriented didactical approach differentiates between a content of education (Bildungsinhalt) and object of education (Bildungsgegenstand), where the object of education escapes the learner´s as well as teacher´s attempt to reduce it to a content of education with an determinable educative potential (Bildungssubstanz/Bildungsgehalt).

The establishment of an axiomatic set of premises of an object-oriented didactics is to allow for a re-engagement with sustainability-related objects of education and with what their indeterminable educational potential means for didactical interventions and expected outcomes of education. 

The promise of education is Janus-faced. On one side it looks to the past and promises to reproduce it. Knowledge, practices and power are institutionalized through education in order to be passed from generation to generation. On the other side education looks to the future and promises to break with this reproduction. Through education, the future of privilege, insight and position is never certain (Säfström,2018). Even though political emphasis on reproducing yesterday’s growth pattern is still very much at the forefront in education, the growing number of sustainability issues show clearly education is, and must, be offering more than the stale reproduction of the problems that riddle our societies and planet. Her we focus on this inherent excess of education. Education always delivers something different than expected and this has become eminently clear with the emerging sustainability issues (Leicht, et al. 2018). First, we are to argue for excess to be the premise and limit of education. Second, this excess challenges current notions of temporality linked with the processes and outcomes of education. Third, this excess consequently haunts contemporary concepts used in order to conceive of education, that is reducing it to linear processes and determinable outcomes. Such conceptions need to be weak and vague given the inherent failure of education to function as a teleological mechanism. Thus we argue for the development of stronger concepts surrounding education in order to support the resilience of education in the face of challenges on three different levels: 1) subject/individual, 2) institutional, 3) societal. Our goal is to rethink education in order to forefront and grasp this inherent excess and how this relates directly to the inherent excess of sustainability issues. To conceive the beautiful risk of education in terms of its always lacking, messy, and gritty excess (Biesta, 2013). It is less of a linear process or journey, but an immanent condition of being a lacking and leaking human.

Communicative Planning Theory (CPT) has been heavily criticized for neglecting context and for not paying sufficient attention to how it influences collaborative planning. While some CPT scholars have attempted to address this critique, there are still limited insights into how context hinders or facilitates the realization of collaborative qualities in planning. The paper contributes to attempts to make CPT more attuned to context by focusing on how context influences specific collaborative processes. It develops an approach that sees collaborative processes as embedded in and shaped by the immediate interplay between institutions and agency. The approach is demonstrated in the analysis of two collaborative planning processes in Ahmedabad, India and Bloemfontein, South Africa. The paper argues for the need to look at the interplay between institutional and agential factors when analysing context. It also highlights the important role that agency plays in mediating the influence of context in specific planning processes.

Purpose Since 2006, higher education institutions (HEIs) in Sweden, should according to the Higher Education Act, promote sustainable development (SD). In 2016, the Swedish Government asked the Swedish higher education authority to evaluate how this study is proceeding. The authority chose to focus on education. This paper aims to produce a report on this evaluation. Design/methodology/approach All 47 HEIs in Sweden were asked to write a self-evaluation report based on certain evaluation criteria. A panel was appointed consisting of academics and representatives for students and working life. The panel wrote an evaluation of each HEI, a report on general findings and recommendations, and gave an overall judgement of each HEI in two classes as follows: the HEI has well-developed processes for integration of SD in education or the HEI needs to develop their processes. Findings Overall, a mixed picture developed. Most HEIs could give examples of programmes or courses where SD was integrated. However, less than half of the HEIs had overarching goals for integration of SD in education or had a systematic follow-up of these goals. Even fewer worked specifically with pedagogy and didactics, teaching and learning methods and environments, sustainability competences or other characters of education for SD. Overall, only 12 out of 47 got a higher judgement. Originality/value This is a unique study in which all HEIs in a country are evaluated. This provides unique possibilities for identifying success factors and barriers. The importance of the leadership of the HEIs became clear.

As climate change and other socio-economic stressors continue to impact coastal social-ecological systems, we need to deepen our knowledge of the capacity to adapt. Global environmental change research has generated several useful concepts and frameworks for understanding and assessing adaptive capacity to climate change impacts, but our ability to effectively integrate and use this wealth of knowledge to mobilise and build the needed adaptive capacity remains low. We build on the capitals and the vulnerability frameworks to develop a new framework to argue for how existing frameworks and concepts can be consolidated for assessing adaptive capacity, how adaptive capacity can be mobilised and the need to assess adaptive capacity in the context of multiple climatic and non-climatic stressors. The framework adds three important insights into the studies of adaptive capacity. First, it recognises that links among various forms of capital (components of adaptive capacity) are critical for mobilising, building or depleting adaptive capacity. Second, it explicitly shows adaptive capacity is better understood when assessed in the context of multiple climatic and non-climatic stressors because the impacts of climate change are bound to manifest in complex coupled human and social systems. Third, it highlights that knowledge of multiple interactions among stressors provides a strong explanation for tackling some inherent developmental issues with climate change adaptation plans and actions. Evidence from smallscale coastal fisheries of Ghana supports the framework's assumptions and arguments.

Small-scale coastal fisheries (SSCF) in the Western region of Ghana are affected by a combination of climate and non-climate stressors. Coastal communities are particularly vulnerable to these stressors because of their proximity to the sea and high dependence on small-scale fisheries for their livelihoods. A better understanding of how fishing communities, particularly SSCF, respond to climate and non-climate stressors is paramount to improve planning and implementation of effective adaptation action. Drawing on the capitals framework, this study examines the adaptive capacity of SSCF to the combined effects of climate-related (increasing coastal erosion, and wave and storm frequency) and non-climate-related stressors (declining catches; scarcity and prohibitive cost of fuel; inconsiderate implementation of fisheries laws and policies; competition from the oil and gas industry; sand mining; and algal blooms). The findings show how fishers mobilise and use adaptive capacity through exploitation of various forms of capital, including cultural capital (e.g., local innovation); political capital (e.g., lobbying government and local authorities); social capital (e.g., collective action); human capital (e.g., local leadership); and natural capital (e.g., utilising beach sand) to respond to multiple stressors. Nevertheless, in many cases, fishers' responses were reactive and led to negative (maladaptive) outcomes. Furthermore, this study underscores the importance of critically considering the interactive nature of capitals and how they collectively influence adaptive capacity in the planning and implementation of adaptation research, policy and practice.

The processes by which adaptive capacity is mobilised in response to multiple stressors are yet to be fully understood. This study addresses this pressing research gap by drawing on the capitals framework and empirical data from small-scale coastal fisheries in the Western Region of Ghana. It employs an ethnographic approach, based on multiple sources of evidence including documents, interviews and participant observation to examine mechanisms of mobilising adaptive capacity in response to climate and non-climate stressors. Our findings suggest that responding to stressors involves mobilising sets of main-available capitals, such as local innovation, ability to improvise, new technologies, corrupt practices and belief systems (cultural capital); collective action, networks and social ties (social capital); and complaints to the government (political capital). These capitals were the main constituents of adaptive capacity, particularly considering non-responsive government and formal organisations. Further, other forms of capitals, i.e., local leadership, local knowledge, learning capacity, and training (human capital); networks, collective actions, associations and bonding ties (social capital); sand (natural capital); funds from fishing (financial capital), combine in complex ways to mobilise such available capitals. This understanding is critical if synergies among main-available and supporting-available capitals are to support building and mobilizing adaptive capacity. Further, it may help guide important decisions, proactive plans and strategic investment for developing key capitals to enhance adaptive capacity.

Small-scale coastal fisheries are exposed to many stressors, such as poor governance, lack of alternative employment, overfishing and diseases. Stressors, in this context, constitute environmental and socio-economic changes or events at local, national or global levels making the fisheries sector or fishers vulnerable. Climate change is expected to compound the consequences of these stressors on fisheries and livelihoods. Identifying and understanding the effects of important stressors are imperative for building and organising appropriate capacity to adapt and, ultimately, for successful adaptation. However, how climate-related and non-climate stressors jointly affect small-scale fisheries is still to be fully explored. In this paper, we use case studies of three coastal communities in,the Western Region of Ghana to gain insights into how multiple stressors combine to affect small-scale fisheries. The findings show that multiple stressors combine in complex ways, affecting fisheries-based livelihoods and the coastal landscape, vegetation and infrastructure. This suggests that any single stressor is just a part of a set of stressors that jointly affect small-scale coastal fisheries. This study proposes that the effects of climate-related stressors are better comprehended when analysed in light of the synergetic effect of multiple stressors. It has the potential to guide policy-makers and managers in designing and implementing improved strategies to enhance adaptive capacity in response to climate change. Moreover, this knowledge can present an opportunity and justification for solving other inherent developmental problems through climate change adaptation policies and actions.

Adaptive management has been considered a valuable approach for managing social-ecological systems involving high levels of complexity and uncertainty. However, many obstacles still hamper its implementation. Law is often seen as a barrier for moving adaptive management beyond theory, although there has been no synthesis on the challenges of legal constraints or how to overcome them. We contribute to filling this knowledge gap by providing a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature on the relationship between adaptive management and law in relation to social-ecological systems. We analyze how the scholarship defines the concept of adaptive management, identifies the legal barriers to adaptive management, and the legal strategies suggested for enabling this approach. Research efforts in this domain are still highly geographically concentrated in the United States of America, unveiling gaps concerning the analysis of other legal jurisdictions. Overall, our results show that more flexible legal frameworks can allow for adaptive management without undermining the role of law in providing stability to social interactions. Achieving this balance will likely require the reform of existing laws, regulations, and other legal instruments. Legal reforms can facilitate the emergence of adaptive governance, with the potential to support not only adaptive management implementation but also to make law itself more adaptive.

Adaptive management has been advocated as an appropriate approach for the management of social-ecological systems, although its implementation has proven to be a challenge. Legal systems can hinder or facilitate adaptive management. Focusing on legal arrangements, this article explores how adaptive management can be better operationalised in the context of coastal management. Byron Shire, a local government area in New South Wales, Australia, was selected as a case study where we: (a) analysed how the concept of adaptive management has emerged within the evolution of coastal management and its applicable legal framework, and (b) identified juridical constraints to adaptive coastal management. Qualitative methods were used for the analysis of relevant documents and semi-structured interviews with 23 key informants. The results show that a distorted version of adaptive management has been adopted in Byron Shire's draft coastal management plans, which fails to adhere to the formal, structured, and iterative process of adaptive management. A legacy created by the legal effects of past decisions affecting coastal management has led to a path dependency towards protective measures to manage coastal erosion, constraining other management options, particularly managed realignment strategies. Failure to address juridical constraints in the early stages of the adaptive management process can result in stakeholder conflict and litigation. Overlitigation harms adaptive coastal management by pushing the decision-making process away from the pathway offered by the legal framework for preparing and implementing coastal management plans. After recent legislative coastal reform at the state level, there is momentum for the Byron Shire Council to refocus its adaptive management approach. However, overcoming existing juridical constraints will require adaptive governance, in which all levels of government must work collaboratively with the affected stakeholders in the design and implementation of the adaptive management process.

Denna text utgör en del av avrapporteringen av uppdrag inom Naturvårdsverkets ramavtal för Konsultstöd för stärkt samverkansförmåga (avropsnummer NV-08990-19).Syftet med rapporten är:I) att presentera en modell för utvärdering av samverkan baserad på a) medvetna val av vem som designar, genomför och deltar i utvärdering, b) relevanta utvärderingskriterier och c) exempel på användbara utvärderingsmetoder, samtII) att presentera principer som kan användas för att avgöra när samverkan är en lämplig arbetsform.Rapporten inleds med definitioner och en reflektion kring vilken roll vi ser att utvärdering har i samverkan. De följande avsnitten är uppdelade utifrån tre grundfrågor avseende utvärdering av samverkan: vem, vad och hur. Frågorna behandlar vilka som utvärderar och deltar i utvärderingen (vem), möjliga utvärderingskriterier (vad) samt exempel på metoder (hur).Därefter presenteras vi två konceptuella verktyg som kan stödja beslut om när samverkan är en lämplig arbetsform. Verktygen är tänkta att i) klargöra möjliga syften med samverkan och i vilken utsträckning dessa syften kan uppnås med andra arbetsformer, och ii) möjliggöra en analys av om förutsättningarna för samverkan är tillräckliga.Rapporten baseras på tidigare forskning; rapporter från utvärderingar av samverkan i svensk offentlig sektor; två fokusgruppsamtal med personal vid Naturvårdsverket samt rapportförfattarnas erfarenheter av att leda och utvärdera samverkansprocesser.

Denna andra delrapport redovisar resultat från den följeforskning som Uppsala universitet bedriver för att stödja SKL:s projekt för att utveckla metoder för medborgardialog om komplexa samhällsfrågor 2015-2018. Rapporten fokuserar på medborgardialoger som har genomförts i Stockholmsstadsdelen Enskede-Årsta-Vantör, Linköping, Fagersta och Svenljunga. Rapporten bygger på deltagande observation av dessa medborgardialoger under 2016 och första halvåret 2017; enkäter till deltagare i dialogerna i Fagersta och Svenljunga; analyser av skriftligt material från alla kommuner i nätverket samt observationer från de nätverksmöten som SKL arrangerat för erfarenhetsutbyte mellan kommunerna. Studierna avser en kort tids arbete med dialoger, som visserligen har avslutats i en första iteration men som i flera av kommunerna troligen kommer att fortsätta i någon form framöver. Därför gör rapporten inte anspråk på att beskriva långsiktiga resultat och effekter.

Den här rapporten redovisar resultat från följeforskning som Swedesd vid Uppsala universitet har bedrivit kring Sveriges Kommuner och Landstings (SKL:s) projekt att utveckla metoder för att hantera och förebygga konflikter i komplexa frågor genom medborgardialog. SKL:s projekt har pågått mellan 2015 och 2018 i ett nätverk med tio kommuner: Burlöv, Enköping, Fagersta, Linköping, Ljusnarsberg, Sollentuna, Stockholm (stadsdelen Enskede-Årsta-Vantör), Svenljunga, Uppsala och Östhammar. Stadsdelen Västra Hisingen i Göteborg ingick inte ursprungligen i projektet, men har genomfört ett arbete som liknar övriga kommuners och beaktas därför också i rapporten. Exempel på komplexa frågor som kommunerna har arbetat med är avvägningar mellan olika värden i fysisk planering, integration och skolnedläggningar.

Med avstamp i SKL:s målsättning för projektet är rapporten övergripande frågeställning följande:

• Hur kan medborgardialoger hantera konflikter om komplexa frågor på ett legitimt sätt?

Empirin som rapporten baseras på utgörs av skriftligt material från kommunerna i nätverket, observationer från de nätverksmöten som SKL arrangerat för erfarenhetsutbyte mellan kommunerna, deltagande observation av medborgardialoger i Enskede-Årsta-Vantör, Linköping, Fagersta och Svenljunga under 2016 och 2017, intervjuer med några nyckelpersoner på kommunerna, samt enkätundersökningar bland deltagare i dialogerna i Fagersta och Svenljunga.

Medborgardialoger som koncept förutsätter processer som vilar på demokratisk legitimitet. Olika teorier som underbygger medborgardialogens praktik betonar delvis olika typer av legitimitet, vilket öppnar för flera olika sätt att genomföra och tolka medborgardialoger. Utifrån detta inleds rapporten med en beskrivning av tre ideal för hur medborgardialoger på ett legitimt sätt kan hantera konflikter:

• Konsensusidealet, som baseras på teorier om deliberativ demokrati och kommunikativ planering.Enligt detta ideal ska medborgardialoger skapa konsensus som upplöser konflikter genom deliberation som uppfyller diskursetiska krav.
• Det agonistiska idealet, som baseras på post-strukturalistisk demokratiteori och agonistisk planeringsteori. Enligt detta ideal ska medborgardialoger erbjuda en arena för fredlig konflikt mellan olikaståndpunkter, där konsensus inte eftersträvas men motsättningar tillfälligt kan hanteras med beslutsformer som deltagarna accepterar.
• Det mobiliserande idealet, som baseras på den progressiva planeringstraditionen och demokratiteoretiker som betonar behov att utjämna maktförhållanden. Enligt detta ideal ska medborgardialoghantera konflikter genom att möjliggöra för en grupp eller diskurs att stärka sin position.

Den modell för medborgardialog kring komplexa frågor som SKL har utvecklat för att stötta kommunerna i nätverket är kompatibel med samtliga tre ideal. Modellen betonar dock insamling av olika relevanta perspektiv på en komplex fråga inför dialogen, och under projektet har SKL tillsammans med anlitade facilitatorer och följeforskare på olika sätt belyst möjligheter att under själva dialogerna bryta motstående perspektiv. I detta avseende implicerar modellen i första hand dialog enligt konsensusidealet eller det agonistiska idealet.

Tre av kommunerna i nätverket förberedde sig i enlighet med SKL:s modell, men kunde av olika skäl inte genomföra själva dialogen – Ljusnarsberg, Östhammar och Sollentuna. Deras erfarenheter är värdefulla eftersom de på olika sätt illustrerar praktiska utmaningar för medborgardialoger kring komplexa frågor.

Uppsala följde inte heller SKL:s modell, utan genomförde samtal med medborgare i olika sammanhang kopplade till en större planprocess. Bland annat genomfördes en dialog kring utformningen av en park som exemplifierar hur olika ideal för konflikthantering kan kombineras.

Bland de kommuner som genomförde dialoger enligt SKL:s modell finns en skillnad mellan Svenljunga och övriga kommuner avseende hur konflikter artikulerades. Svenljungas förberedelser liknade övriga kommuners, men diskussionen under själva dialogen riktades snabbt mot en tydlig konfliktlinje bland deltagarna - bevarande av byskolor kontra centralisering av skolorganisationen. Efter några försök att nå samsyn övergavs konsensusidealet och istället fick representanter för de olika ståndpunkterna ta fram separata underlag för politiskt beslut i linje med det agonistiska idealet.

Medborgardialogerna i Enskede-Årsta-Vantör, Enköping, Fagersta, Linköping och Västra Hisingen behandlade olika aspekter av social problematik, medan dialogen i Burlöv behandlade en beslutad utbyggnad av järnvägsspår. Till skillnad från i Svenljunga aktiverades inte tydliga konflikter kopplade till dessa frågor inom ramen för dialogerna, även om potentiella spänningar identifierades under förberedelserna. Deltagarna var istället tämligen eniga i sina perspektiv och kunde nå samsyn kring åtgärdsförslag. I så måtto kan dialogerna karaktäriseras som social mobilisering i olika stadsdelar, eller som mobilisering kring inkludering av svaga grupper eller implementering av fattade beslut. I vår tolkning berodde den mobiliserande inriktningen inte på något medvetet beslut, utan snarare på en logisk följd av en kedja av val: 1) målformuleringar som inte specificerade en konflikt utan snarare behov av mobilisering; 2) breda initiala beskrivningar av de komplexa frågorna; och 3) öppna inbjudningar till dialogerna och svårigheter att säkerställa att motstående perspektiv representerades. Vi föreslår att dessa val delvis kan förklaras med en konfliktundvikande tendens kopplad till en rädsla att erodera tillit, och en motsättning mellan en önskan att ta ett helhetsgrepp kring en komplex fråga och möjligheten att rikta fokus mot en specifik konflikt. Vi menar att mobiliserande dialoger som inte inkluderar och tydliggör motstående perspektiv kan innebära en risk att konflikter skjuts på framtiden och skärps, men samtidigt ser vi att en framgångsrik mobilisering potentiellt kan identifiera åtgärder som hanterar dessa konflikter eller undanröjer deras grogrund.Ett viktigt resultat som tycks vara gemensamt för samtliga kommuner i SKL:s projekt är ökad kunskap och ökad tillit gentemot kommunerna bland dialogernas deltagare, vilket kan fungera generellt konfliktförebyggande. Också dialogen i Svenljunga genererade tillit och lärande, trots att den inkluderade en tydlig konflikt som inte gick att lösa ut inom ramen för projektet.

I den fortsatta utvecklingen av praktiken kring konflikthantering genom medborgardialog menar vi att det är önskvärt att kommuner tydliggör vilket eller vilka ideal som en dialog strävar mot. Vi konstaterar också att det återstår frågor kring hur konflikter i form av motstridiga perspektiv bland deltagarna i en medborgardialog kan hanteras på legitima sätt. Med avstamp i Dryzeks syn på demokrati som deliberation mellan olika diskurser menar vi att det skulle kunna vara fruktbart att mer explicit artikulera konfliktlinjer kring en komplex fråga inför en dialog; att genom medveten rekrytering säkerställa representation av motstridiga perspektiv; och att genom aktiv facilitering rikta dialogen mot konfliktlinjerna.