Michael HåkanssonSenior lecturer

About me

I have a position as a Senior lecturer in didactics at the Department of Education, Stockholm University.

My overall research focus is on didactic issues (teaching and learning) in general and developing students’ political literacy through the use of controversial political and sustainability issues in particular.

I explore interrelations between Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE/ESD), democratic pluralism, controversial issues (political conflicts) and embodiment (aesthetics) and how these four parts constitute an educational practice of teaching aiming to develop students’ abilities to participate in actions for a sustainable development in the mutually interrelated systems of ecology, economics and social.  In addition, I do research on analyzing both social movements and education for sustainable development from a spatiotemporal approach. 

 My theoretical and methodological expertise is foremost the American pragmatists, foremost John Dewey, the Belgian political philosopher Chantal Mouffe’s theory of agonistic pluralism, the French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist Bruno Latour and the French Psychosociologist and philosopher of education Michel-Aldaheff-Jones. I have experience of collecting data through video-recording, interviews and texts and use a transactional method consisting of American pragmatists and the later Wittgenstein to analyze the collected data.

Notably, I am very thankful to have collaborated or still collaborating with professional and highly skilled researchers such as Professor Jim Garrison, Professor Leif Östman, Professor Katrin van Poeck, Professor Danny Wildemeersch and Professor Jeppe Læssøe.

I received my Ph.D. within didactics. The thesis explored teaching and learning of the political dimension within Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE). The thesis contributes with analytical models how ‘the political’ appears in educational practices. The model called Political Tendency show different ways in which the political dimension of sustainability issues appears in educational practice and the model Political moment: a model for analyzing moments where students’ deal with unpredictable, unfixed, unstructured and non-intentional bodily sensations and transform those bodily sensations into political emotions in teaching and learning settings. From these models I have developed a third model on teaching that involves Political commitments These three models’ - Political tendency, Political moment and Political commitments - are crucial in my research.

I am an active member in the research group Education Research in Citizenship Competences (ERiCC). The research group defines competence as acquisition and mobilization of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values through a process of reflection, anticipation and action to meet complex demands in order to develop the interrelated competences to broaden, deepen and develop pluralistic democracy.

 Further, I am taking part in several research groups. One of them is TePlab ((Laboratory for Teaching Practices). TePlab crosses boundaries: geographically, disciplinary, theoretically, etc. It is a research environment that gathers members from Uppsala University, Ghent University, Stockholm University, and Malmö University. TePlab is also strongly engaged in scientific collaborations in numerous projects and networks.

I am included in two scientific networks coordinated by  Van Poeck at Gent University:  “SEDwise: Sustainability education – Teaching and learning in the face of wicked socio-ecological problems” and “Public pedagogy and sustainability challenges”, which  gather leading scholars in education and sustainable development from the universities of Cambridge, Uppsala, Rhodes, Aarhus, Gothenburg, Wageningen, Monash, Saskatchewan, Örebro, Stockholm, Oslo, Umeå, Leuven, Södertörn and Gdańsk. These networks are ongoing and Håkansson has together with Professor Jeppe Læssøe,and Danny Wildemeersch, submit papers with spatiotemporal approaches combining Dewey’s and Aldaheff-Jones concept of rhythm and the role of aesthetics in both formal and non-formal learning settings.

I am continuously doing reviews for peer-reviewed journals, foremost Environmental Education Research (EER).

At the department I designed and implemented two academic courses: “Education for sustainable development” for practitioners of developing sustainability in their professions and “Lead Learning for Sustainable Development for School Leaders - Commissioned training ” as the title says, for School Leaders at all levels of the Swedish educational system.

Finally, I have a background as a primary school teacher and am qualified to teach Social Science, History, Religion and Geography. I taught 12 years at lower secondary school in Sweden, in the municipalities of Stockholm and Uppsala.

Being financed in following projects:

”Different manners of teaching dealing with controversial sustainability issues”. Financed by Vetenskapsrådet (The Swedish Science Council). The leader of the project: Leif Östman (Uppsala University). Grant number: 2017-03662. Years 2018-2022

“Didactical models and learning study”. Financed by Stiftelsen Marcus och Amalia Wallenbergs minnesfond (Foundation of Marcus and Amalia Wallenbergs Memorial fund). The leader of the project: Leif Östman (Uppsala University). Grant number MAW 2017.0099. Year 2018-2021