Title: To what extent can hope be discerned during an Education for Sustainable Development Philosophy for/with Children workshop with young people?

The dissertation considers the phenomenon of hope in relationship to Education for Sustainability (ESD) and with awareness of the entanglement of hope with utopias, the imaginary of education and other phenomenon in the neighbourhood of hope. With a Diffractive ethico-onto-epistem-ology (Barad, 2007) the dissertation proposes the Living Narrative of hope and analyses the material-discursive ‘classroom’ to discern hope through the process of a philosophical community of inquiry. Throughout the dissertation hope is discussed as a conative, emotive, affective and actant phenomenon with a vital force for future change and with an ‘opening’ for potentiality and becomings. There is an increasing interest in the importance of hope in education and specifically within ESD due to the concerns of neo-liberal cynicism, despair and planetary injustice causing perpetuating climate and environmental crisis, therefore, the dissertation aims to contribute to the wider discourse of hope and eco-social justice. Previous education research has identified hope as crucial to empowering children and young people with agency and skills for action, as well as having an influential effect on pro-environmental behaviour. The dissertation, taking a posthumanist and new materialism perspective, instead discusses the materialising and discerning of hope through classroom intra-actions, which includes exploring Spinozan ‘affect’, Bennett’s (2010) vibrant matter, Latour’s (1996) interobjectivity and recent discourse on re/enchantment through the ‘ecological affect’ of vital materialism. The dissertation thus provides a starting point for exploring hope as an ‘actant’ phenomenon through past, present and future, materialising through relationally constructed futural imaginaries and possible new worlds.