Storytelling sustainability in problem-based learning

This chapter applies a storytelling framework to problem-based learning (PBL). The intention is to develop an ethical framework for learning that supports the realization of the seventeen sustainability development goals (SDGs). We see SDG as a materialization of the 21st century challenge to mankind. The realization of these goals relies on changes in institutional systems, economic systems, technology, distribution, organizational and social innovation and consumer behavior. Sustainability constitutes a major challenge to education generally and to problem-based learning specifically. Nobody knows how the future will look like. It is therefore decisive to prepare students to enter into this increasingly uncertain and complex future in order to prepare them for seizing and shaping the future in an ethical way. We propose antenarrative story-making as a methodology for PBL. This methodology comprises knowledge, skills and competences, which are seen as important for students to enact ethics and collective responsibility shaping a sustainable world. The chapter combines two approaches to story making: The first one is based in Hannah Arendt on collective responsibility. This approach is based on her distinctions between thinking, action and judgment, which come together in ethical story making of the future. The second one is true storytelling—where stories are seen as important for bridging strategies, communities, spaces, geographies, nature and people. These approaches share a perception of stories as collective, relational and material and as being directed towards the future. They also share the idea that learning and education has to emerge from the “ground”—the historical, discursive and material spaces that people are part of. Together the two approaches provide a comprehensive framework for problem-based learning and education, which is based in “true” action.