Esdebate

This novel publication includes summaries of the main issues arising from an internet discussion on the changing perspectives on environmental education in the light of the global initiative on sustainable development. Fifty experts from around the world discussed in five rounds how they see the field evolving. The accompanying CD-ROM allows you to delve into the points made by each participant. It also contains a top-10 list of books and sites on the subject. It explains how the web site discussion was managed, for those interested in learning more about mobilizing knowledge using the opportunities of the worldwide web.

Our Common Illiteracy takes seriously the international consensus that Education for Sustainability (EfS) is crucial to the survival of humankind. It establishes the principles of a sustainable society and performs a rigorous assessment of the re

In this book, Wolff-Michael Roth takes a 38-minute conversation in one science classroom as an occasion for analyzing learning and development from a perspective by and large inspired by the works of Mikhail Bakhtin but also influenced by Lev Vygotsky and 20th century European phenomenology and American pragmatism.

This collection traces the development and findings of curriculum studies of environmental education since the mid-1970s. Based on a virtual special issue of the Journal of Curriculum Studies, the volume identifies a series of curriculum challenges for and from environmental education. These include key questions in curriculum politics, planning and implementation, including which educative experiences should a curriculum foster and why; what the scope of a worthwhile curriculum should be and how it should be decided, organised and reworked; why distinctive curricula are provided to different groups of students; and how curriculum should best be enacted and evaluated? The editor and contributors call for renewed attention to the possibilities for future directions in research, in light of previously published work and innovations in scholarship. They also offer critical commentary on curriculum, critique and crisis in environmental education, through new material and previous studies from the journal, by addressing three key themes: perspectives on curriculum and environment education; accounting for curriculum in environmental education; and changes in curriculum for environmental education.

The book is based on the exchange of professional experiences which featured in an IUCN CEC workshop in August 2002. Practitioners from around the world shared their models of good practice and explored the challenges involved in engaging people in sustainability. The difficulties facing practitioners vary between country and context but some challenges are universal: A lack of clarity in communicating what is meant by sustainable development; An ambition to educate everyone to bring about a global citizenship; Social, organisational or institutional factors constrain change to sustainable development, yet there is an emphasis on formal education, and community educators do not receive the same support; A lack of balance in addressing the integration of environmental, social and economic dimensions leading to an interpretation that ESD is mainly about environment and conservation issues; New learning (rather than teaching) approaches are called for to promote more debate in society. Yet, few are trained or experienced in these new approaches. Practitioners need support to explore new ways of promoting learning. [Foreword, ed].

Across Africa, a burgeoning middle class has become the poster child for the 'Africa rising' narrative. Ambitious, aspirational and increasingly affluent, this group is said to embody the values and hopes of the new Africa, with international bodies ranging from the United Nations Development Programme to the World Bank regarding them as important agents of both economic development and democratic change. This narrative, however, obscures the complex and often ambiguous role that this group actually plays in African societies. Bringing together economists, political scientists, anthropologists and development experts, and spanning a variety of case studies from across the continent, this collection provides a much-needed corrective to the received wisdom within development circles, and provides a fresh perspective on social transformations in contemporary Africa.

The links between education and sustainable development are deepening, although subject to much controversy and debate. The success of the sustainability discourse depends both on the pedagogic and research functions of higher education. Similarly, for higher education itself to remain relevant and engaged it faces pressure not only to integrate the insights and lessons drawn from the perspective of sustainable development, but also to be responsive to scrutiny of its own practices in relation to sustainability. Among professionals in higher education, sustainable development has its supporters and detractors. It is embraced by some individuals and departments while being perceived by others as a threat to the coherence of particular disciplines. Although it is not currently an academic discipline in its own right, increasing public and professional familiarity with the term, and the increasing urgency of global calls for the implementation of sustainable development mean that this is rapidly changing. This volume analyses the impact of the concepts and practices of sustainability and sustainable development on various academic disciplines, institutional practices, fields of study and methods of enquiry. The contributors, drawn from a wide-range of disciplines, perspectives, educational levels and institutional contexts, examine the purpose of the modern university and the nature of sustainable education, which includes exploring links to social movements for sustainability projects, curriculum change, culture and biodiversity, values relating to gender equality and global responsibility, and case studies on the transformation, or otherwise, of some specific disciplines.