Category Archives: ESD

New book on 50 years of Education and Learning for Sustainable Futures

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We are pleased to share with you the publication of our new book, Education and Learning for Sustainable Futures: 50 years of learning and environmental change. This book explores fundamental questions about how the role of education has evolved over the decades since the pivotal 1972 Stockholm Conference, which brought environmental learning to the forefront of global awareness.

Co-authors, Daniella Tilbury and Thomas Macintyre and myself, have attempted to find some answers by tracking through the decades (1970-2020) the development of narratives, thinking, and practice of learning and education in support of the environment and sustainability. What is clear is that the profile and presence of learning and education for the environment has been elevated in today’s policy discourses and communities of practice. Yet, our analysis identified some clear differences in the way education and learning for the environment has been approached over time. 

In our new book, we trace these changes over the decades while looking ahead to the challenges and opportunities of the future.  A key wildcard in this journey is Artificial Intelligence (AI), which holds immense potential to bridge digital and green agendas, enabling smarter environmental management and driving innovation toward a sustainable future. However, we also address critical concerns: data privacy breaches, outsourcing human thinking to profit-driven algorithms, exacerbation of inequalities, and the environmental footprint of AI infrastructure.

This book provides a light way into the history, developments and prospects of the field of Environmental and Sustainability Education.

Full reference:

Macintyre, T., Tilbury, D., & Wals, A. (2024). Education and Learning for Sustainable Futures: 50 Years of Learning for Environment and Change (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003467007

Wish to read more? Our book is open access thanks to the funding of the Dutch Government that funded this publication: https://www.routledge.com/Education-and-Learning-for-Sustainable-Futures-50-Years-of-Learning-for-Environment-and-Change/Macintyre-Tilbury-Wals/p/book/9781032727912

Our thanks also go to Stakeholder Forum and to @JanGustav for his leadership role in the Stockholm+50 reflective dialogues, and to UNEP/ the Swedish Government for spurring us on to track the historical development of education and learning for the environment. We are also grateful to @Routledge for taking an interest in publishing the text.

Ane Eir Thorsdottir Successfully Defends PhD-dissertation on Youth Participation in a Whole School Approach

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On Friday November 1st one of my Norwegian PhD Candidates successfully defended her dissertation. Over the past few years I have been working with colleagues both at Wageningen University and at the Norwegian Life Sciences University (NMBU) on researching the potential merits of so-called Whole School and/or Whole Institution Approaches (WSA/WIA) to sustainability. At NMBU there are currently four PhD-candidates doing research related to this, Ane Eir Thorsdottir is or rather, was one of them. Her work focusses on one aspect of the WSA which is critically important: students participation. In addition to myself, Prof Astrid Sinnes of NMBU and Dr. Daniel Olsson of Karlstad University in Sweden were her supervisors. Jan Cincera and Elin Saether (Olso Univerity) were her ‘ opponents’ .She has published three articles that are central in the dissertation: two in Environmental Education Research and one in Global Environmental Research.

 

Elin Seather (left) having a dialogue with Ane (right) during the defence – posing an interesting question about autonomy and self-determination as pedagogical principles in a world that requires a decentering of ‘ self’ and opening up for ‘ other’ as well.

Whole School Approaches to Sustainability

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Education Renewal in Times of Distress

LInk to the book: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-56172-6

At last – the edited volume on ‘Whole School Approaches to Sustainability – Educational renewal in times of distress’ has come out. Together with co-editors, Birgitte Bjønness, Astrid Sinnes and Ingrid Eikeland, and managing editor Stine Marie FyskeHaraldsen, we have worked with authors from around the world to create this rich picture of principles, practices and prospects of school working more systemically and holistically with sustainability, rather than treating it like another subject to be added to an already overcrowded curriculum.

The book has been made Open Acess and all 24 (!) chapters can be downloaded for free thanks to a grant provided through the Dutch Government-Supported Programme for Learning for Sustainable Development (LvDO).

We wish to acknowledge Roel van Raaij who has been an advocate of Education for Sustainable Development, both nationally and internationally, from within the Dutch government for decades, and Ellen Leusink who facilitates and supports ESD through the LvDO program and paved the way for the open access.

We also want to acknowledge the Department of Educational Science at
the Norwegian Life Science University (NMBU led by Hans Erik Lefdal together with Akershus county municipality (the school district South of Oslo) for the support to establish and run the University—School partnership for the last 6 years or so, continuing to this
day. The partnership with schools, especially the collaboration with school
coordinators and principals, have supported the development of the Whole
School Approach through research and praxis. Without this foundation and
support, we would not have had the knowledge, time, and confidence to work
on this book.

Here is the link to the book: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-56172-6

New paper out: Vocational education for a sustainable future

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Saskia Weijzen published her first article as a part of her PhD-journey. The full title is:  Vocational education for a sustainable future: Unveiling the collaborative learning narratives to make space for learning

I am sharing the abstract here to pique, hopefully, your curiosity:

In the light of urgent global sustainability challenges, vocational education is searching for new approaches that are more just and future proof. At least a part of the answer seems to lie in so-called collaborative learning arrangements where students together with societal actors explore sustainability-related challenges. The amount of this kind of arrangements in which vocational education participates increases. Empirical studies on what actually goes on in the collaborative arrangements are rather scarce. This study addresses the theory-practice gap by applying a participatory design. The study unveils that deeply seated educational and socio-cultural routines like the student as learner, alienation from issues, a bias towards cognitive knowing and ‘solving’ problems seem to limit the possibilities for more genuine collaboration to emerge. The study also found that by intervening with creative and reflexive methods, space for transformative learning can unfold that allows engagement with existential questions like ‘what is it what I really got to do here?’. The opening up of these spaces was accompanied by longings to go beyond the rosy narratives of collaborative learning arrangements and to have more attention for the persistent embeddedness of educational routines in the societal issues around us. Vocational education as society. What happens if we progress towards vocational education for sustainable futures with more modesty and introspection?

The full citation and doi (it is open access!) is:

Weijzen, S. M. G., Onck, C., Wals, A. E., Tassone, V. C., & Kuijer-Siebelink, W. (2024). Vocational education for a sustainable future: Unveiling the collaborative learning narratives to make space for learning. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 76(2), 331–353. https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2023.2270468

Exploring environmental stewardship among youth from a high-biodiverse region in Colombia – new study!

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Source: Salva La Selva

Led by Daniel Couceiro, I was priviledged to join a group of reflective practitioners and colleague Valentina Tassone on the meaning of stewardship in a troubled highly biodiverse region Here you have the main premise of the paper but please go to the full paper for a more in-depth encounter with the work.

Nature degradation is rooted in the disruption of the human-land connection. Its restoration requires the regeneration of environmental stewardship as a way to live within environmental limits, especially for younger generations. In this study we used the implementation of a year-round, non-formal environmental education program during COVID-19 times to explore environmental stewardship in adolescents between 14- and 18-years old from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia. Using a qualitative methodology, we mapped expressions of environmental stewardship among local youth. We found several barriers that can be challenged and levers that can be nurtured through inclusive, place-based and collaborative environmental education strategies to foster youth’s environmental stewardship in Colombian’s high-biodiverse regions.

Full citation and link to open access paper:

Daniel Couceiro, Ivona Radoslavova Hristova, Valentina Tassone, Arjen Wals & Camila Gómez (2023) Exploring environmental stewardship and youth engagement in biodiversity among youth from a high-biodiverse region in Colombia, The Journal of Environmental Education, DOI: 10.1080/00958964.2023.2238649

A regenerative decolonization perspective on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) from Latin America – new research

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Central Figure in the article:  Regenerative education through decolonial praxis.

Led by former Wageningen University PhD Dr. Thomas Macintyre and current Wageningen University Post-Doc, Dr Daniele Tubino de Souza, I was priviledged to collaborate on this new paper that appeared in the latest issue of Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. This paper provides a Latin American perspective on ESD, with a focus on transformative and participatory learning in community contexts. With a long history of critical pedagogies, Latin America provides a fertile ground for exploring alternative forms of education as a means to address deep-rooted challenges in western traditional strands of education. We start by providing an overview of pertinent educational currents present in Latin America, then ground these perspectives in two case studies carried out by the authors – one from Colombia, the other from Brazil – which explore grassroots initiatives in community settings that utilise different forms of education and learning. We then propose an integrative model to foster alternative educational approaches that might lead to decolonial and regenerative praxis, finishing with a discussion on how Latin American-rooted regenerative decolonisation perspective and praxis can inform global ESD discourses.

You can find the full paper here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057925.2023.2171262

Full citation: Macintyre, T. Tubino de Souza, D. & Wals, A.E.J. (2023) A regenerative decolonization perspective on ESD from Latin America, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, DOI: 10.1080/03057925.2023.2171262

 Education in Times of Climate Change – comprehensive NORRAG Special Volume

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Climate change is not a new issue for education, but new levels of consensus and concern are emerging, suggesting that new policy developments may follow. This NORRAG Special Issue (NSI 07) addresses the question of how education is to equip learners to participate in climate action that would fundamentally disrupt existing problematic systems. This NSI has the potential to inform pedagogical praxis, co-learning, curriculum, climate action, policy formulation, frameworks for evaluating success, resourcing decisions and what we might consider educative acts for engaging with climate change and its multi-dimensional uncertainties, risks and opportunities. 

Edited by South African Professors Eureta Rosenberg and Heila Lotz-Sisitka, this is one of the most comprehensive and ground braking collections of papers available at the moment. The special issue is completely open access. You can find the full table of contents here.

I am very pleased to have found two wonderful Norwegian colleagues – Astrid Sinnes of the Norwegian Life Sciences University and Ole Andreas Kvamme of the University of Oslo who were willing to join in writing a contribution which is titled: School Strikes as Catalysts for Rethinking Educational Institutions, Purposes and Practices

I am also delighted to see two of my former PhD’s, Thomas Macintyre and Martha Chaves, based in Colombia in the special issue as well with a paper on Climate Change Resilience through Collaborative Learning in the Colombian Coffee Region – they co-authored with Tatiana Monroy who, like omas and Martha volunteers for Fundación Mentes en Transición, Colombia, South America

There will be an online launch of the NORRAG Special Issue 07 (NSI 07): Education in Times of Climate Change, will take place on 6 October 2022 at 16:00 – 17:30 CEST. For more information about the llaunch event have look here!

Transgressive learning, resistance pedagogy and disruptive capacitybuilding as levers for sustainability

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Earlier this month the 8th Report from the Global University Network fir Innovation (GUNi) was published with a wealth of contributions critiquing current resilient modes and models of education and outlinig alternative one in light of the current systemic global dysfunction we find ourselves in. I was asked to contribute a chapter on transgressive learning. The link to the chapter is here

TransgressiveLearningResistancePedagogyWals_2022_GUNIDownload

You can find the entire book at www.guni-call4action.org

The full citation for my chapter is: Wals, AEJ (2022) Transgressive learning, resistance pedagogy and disruptive capacity building as levers for sustainability. In: Higher Education in the World 8 – Special issue New Visions for Higher Education, Barcelona: Global University Network for Innovation (GUNi). Open access: www.guni-call4action.org, p216-222.

Summer School River Lives and Living Rivers: Towards a transdisciplinary conceptualization

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I feel very privileged to be part of one of the two major International River Research projects led by Wageningen UR colleague Prof. Rutgerd Boelens: Riverhood and RiverCommons. Riverhood and River Commons are both 5-year research projects that focus on enlivening rivers, river co-governance initiatives, and new water justice movements.

Riverhood is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) (Grant Agreement No 101002921) and aims to build groundbreaking transdisciplinary concepts and methodological tools to analyze and support new water justice movements’ institutions, strategies and practices for equitable and sustainable water governance. It does so through comparing initiatives in Latin America (Ecuador and Colombia) and Europe (Netherlands and Spain). The focus will be on movements promoting novel concepts and practices such as Rights of Nature, new water cultures or nature-inclusive hydraulics, to name just a few.

RiverCommons is funded by Wageningen University’s Interdisciplinary Research and Education Fund (INREF) and unites chair groups from the social and natural sciences, as well as partners worldwide. Its objective is to develop transdisciplinary concepts and methods for research, education, and multi-stakeholder interactions to understand and support river co-governance initiatives and sustainable socio-ecological river systems in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe.

While each of the projects has its specific objectives, activities, regions, and partners, there is immense potential for synergies and cross-pollination. Riverhood and River Commons will therefore be integrated in multiple ways, to together build a diverse and wide network of river scholars, activists, and institutions that commonly aim to understand and strengthen river co-governance around the world.

Both projects are united by a common framework that illuminates the different facets and complexities of river systems. The framework encompasses four dimensions: River-as-Ecosociety, River-as-Territory, River-as-Subject, and River-as-Movement. You can find more information about it in Concepts.

Another important component of both projects is the development of Environmental Justice Labs (Riverhood) and River Co-governance Labs (River Commons) to be organized in the case study sites to co-create knowledge and mobilize and exchange ideas for change.

One exciting immediate prospect and possibility for PhD’s from around the world is our Summer School “River Lives and Living Rivers: Towards a transdisciplinary conceptualization”

Here is the short introduction to the course:

World’s rivers are fundamental to social and natural well-being but profoundly affected by mega-damming and pollution. In response to top-down and technocratic approaches, in many places riverine communities practice forms of ‘river co-governance’, integrating ecological, cultural, political, economic and technological dimensions. In addition, new water justice movements (NWJMs) have emerged worldwide to creatively transform local ideas for ‘enlivening rivers’ into global action and vice versa. The Summer School aims to provide PhD students who conduct research on these ‘river commons’ and NWJMs with transdisciplinary concepts and approaches for studying their emerging ideas, concepts, proposals and strategies. The training thereby focuses on conceptualizing river systems in all senses, and capacity-building for (understanding and supporting) river knowledge co-creation and democratisation from the bottom up.

Whole School Approaches (WSA) to Sustainability – Principles, Practices and Prospects – Call for Contributions

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It is my pleasure to share two calls for contributions in relation to the development of a Whole School Approach (WSA) to Sustainability. The first one relates to an international hybrid conference organized by the Dutch government that will take place in The Netherlands and partially online late March of 2022, the second one relates to an edited Volume on the topic in the Springer SDG4 Series on Quality Education.

  1. Call for exemplary practices of a Whole School Approach to Sustainable Development

The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy have commissioned a report to provide practical examples of how a Whole Institution/ Whole School Approach (WSA) is being used in practice around the world to engage with SDG4 – Quality Education, especially in relation to sustainable development issues as covered by the other SDGs. The reports aim is to highlight different aspects of a WSA  – curriculum development, pedagogical innovation, school management and leadership, school-community relationships, professional development of staff, and the school as a ‘living laboratory’ for experimenting with healthy, equitable, democratic, and ecologically sustainable living – especially how these aspects can be integrated to mutually strengthen each other.

We are particularly interested in so-called critical case-studies that do not only highlight best-practice strategies and success stories, but also share the struggles, set-backs and challenges underneath and ways to overcome them. The report will be published as part of the WSA International Conference happening in The Netherlands on the 30th-31st March.

If you know of such a school (primary, secondary, or vocational) from your country that can be used as an exemplary example of a WSA in action, or want further details, please contact Rosalie Mathie via email. rosalie.mathie@nmbu.no before February 15th so she can still contact people connected to the exemplary case.

2 Call for Abstracts Springer SDG4 Series
Whole School Approaches to Sustainability – Principles, Practices  and Prospects

Ingrid Eikeland, Brigitte Bjønness, Astrid Sinnes and Arjen Wals (Eds)

Schools across the globe are seeking to respond to emerging topics like; climate change, biodiversity loss, healthy food and food security, and global citizenship. They are increasingly encouraged to do so by educational policies that recognize the importance of these topics and by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

While there is recognition that such topics should not be added on to an already full curriculum, but rather require more systemic and integrated approaches, doing so in practice has proven to be difficult. This edited Volume seeks to engage educators, school leaders, educational policy-makers and scholars of sustainability in education in key principles, critical perspectives, generative processes and tools that can help realize a Whole School Approach to Sustainability. The book will contain three sections:  1) Principles & Perspectives, 2) Critically Reflexive Contextual Case Studies (Early Childhood, Primary, Secondary and Vocational Education) and 3) Synthesis: Challenges and Prospects.

The editors are inviting abstracts (no more than 500 words) of potential chapters. Contributions can be research-based (spanning different genres of research) but can also be more conceptual in the form of critically reflexive essays. Abstracts should indicate a best fit with one of the sections and need to be accompanied with short bios of the author(s) and, if possible, references to prior publications that relate to the topic.

Please send your initial ideas for a contribution or any queries you may have to: ingrid.eikeland@nmbu.no before March 1st. All abstracts will be reviewed by the editors and a selection will be made for further development into a full manuscript to be published by the end of 2022.

T-learning in Times of Transition Towards a Sustainable World – Keynote held for Learning for Sustainability Scotland

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I was invited to give the closing keynote of the 2020 Annual General Meeting and Networking of Learning for Sustainability Scotland. The event was held online for the first time on 12th January 2021. More than 150 members gathered to explore the theme Building Forward Better: The role of Learning for Sustainability – What role does Learning for Sustainability play in making the world a better place, and how can we make this a reality? You can find a summary of the event and link to each of the programma elements here: https://learningforsustainabilityscotland.org/2021/01/28/report-from-the-lfs-scotland-jan-dec-2020-agm/

My talk titled ‘T-learning in Times of Transition Towards a Sustainable World’ presented an ultimately hopeful perspective on the role of new forms of learning and more ecological approaches of education in overcoming global systemic dysfunction – outlining some principles, perspectives and sharing international practice. You can see the 40 minute talk introduced generously by Rehema White, here: https://media.ed.ac.uk/media/1_gcmxxtyz The talk is followed up by some responses to questions raised by the participants.

Mobilising capacities for Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures: Opening spaces for collaborative action and learning

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The TESF Network tesf.netw has just released a background paper on Mobilising Capacities for Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures. Transforming education for sustainable futures requires coalitions and collaborations which span traditional boundaries – academic, professional, geographical and generational. A key point of departure in the paper is that sustainability is not something which can be discovered by scientists and disseminated through policy and practitioner networks, but rather something which must be created through processes of collective deliberation, questioning, negotiation, and experimentation. This requires opening spaces for examining entrenched unsustainable patterns, habits and routines which have become ‘frozen’, and engaging in collective action which includes experimenting, making and learning from errors, and celebrating progress towards more sustainable alternatives.

The key elements of mobilising capacities for achieving more dialogical, deliberative and co-creative forms of sustainability in and through education, can be summarised as follows:

Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures requires mobilising capacities in the form of knowledge, skills, agency, relationships and other valuable resources which are distributed across communities, organisations, professions and other stakeholder groups.

From a holistic or ecological perspective, capacities are relational, emerging through social interactions and relationships-in-action, rather than being individual properties or attributes.

Mobilising capacities which are distributed, and fostering capacities which are relational, requires reaching out and bringing together diverse groups to pursue shared goals within a wider coalition or network.

This requires creating, or opening up, spaces for dialogue, deliberation, experimentation, decision-making, developing relationships, and collaborative inquiry, action and learning.

Across these spaces, intentional structures and processes can support the learning of individuals and groups within the network, and facilitate learning by the network.

You can find the full paper here! https://tesf.network/resource/mobilising-capacities-for-transforming-education-for-sustainable-futures-opening-spaces-for-collaborative-action-and-learning/

The Case for Transformative Public Education: Responding to Covid-19 now while addressing long-term underlying inequalities

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Last Fall a consortium of which I am proud to be a part, along with the Education & Learning Sciences Group of Wageningen University received funding from the UK-government to a so-called GCRF Network Plus on Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures. The network is co-ordinated out of the University of Bristol and includes partners in India, Rwanda, Somalia/Somaliland, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. TESF undertakes collaborative research to Transform Education for Sustainable Futures. We have just released an introductory video (see above) and just released a timely paper:

TESFBriefing

Here is the link to the briefing paper:

The Case for Transformative Public Education: Responding to Covid-19 now while addressing long-term underlying inequalities

This paper addresses the following topics:

  • What is Transformative Public Education
  • Why Transformative Public Education matters to the COVID-19 response
  • Why Transformative Public Education matters for addressing long-term underlying risks to communities
  • Examples of Transformative Public Education responses to COVID-19
  • Suggestions for governments and state welfare actors seeking to work with Transformative Public Education
  • Suggestions for community leaders working with Transformative Public Education
  • Transformative Public Education in times of physical distancing
  • Key readings and resources

On the TESF website you will also find other resources you may find of interest. Have a look here TESF Home Page

This is TESF’s first response to the C-19 situation, and we would like to see it widely distributed, given the timely nature of this topic.  Please do all you can to share it widely across your networks. https://tesf.network/resource/transformative-public-education/

Reconfiguring Environmental Sustainability in Early Childhood: a Post-anthropocentric Approach – Kassahun Weldemariam

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On April 24th my last formal activity for The Faculty of Education at the University of Gothenburg ended with the successful defence & disputation by my PhD student at GU, Kassahun Weldemariam. Kassahun worked for almost 5 years on a study on sustainability in early childhood education from a posthuman perspective. Prof. Karen Malone was his opponent while Dr. Beniamin Knutsson and Dr. Helena Pedersen were co/supervisors. Due to COVID19 the whole defence had to take place via Zoom which worked well but did strip the event from the usual rituals and festivities afterwards.

The purpose of his dissertation of which three chapters were published in peer reviewed journals and one as a book chapter,  was twofold. First, Kassahun explored how the notion of sustainability is conceptualized within early childhood education discourses and how it is manifested in early childhood curricula. Second, the dissertation examined post-anthropocentric possibilities of sustainability within early childhood education.

A major finding of the two studies, relating to the first purpose, is that early childhood education tends to have an anthropocentric bias and over-emphasizes the importance of children’s agency in enhancing their potential to contribute to sustainability. Using this finding as a backdrop, the major finding of the two subsequent studies, relating to the second purpose, is that post-anthropocentric analysis can help to challenge these shortcomings and offer the emergence of a different sustainability ethos. In doing so, sustainability is reconceptualized as a generative concept that opens up possibilities for children to learn-with, become-with and affected by non-humans, i.e. other species and non-human forces. Specific posthuman concepts such as assemblage, distributed agency and becoming-with are used as thinking tools.

Systematic literature review and curricula content analysis were employed as methods for study one and study two respectively. Study three and study four drew ideas from post-qualitative inquiry which employ concepts that allow to experimentally engage with the world and think with/become-with data.

The latter two studies empirically demonstrate emerging possibilities of learning for sustainability with the non-human others/material forces and other species. In the end, the dissertation highlights that post-humanist and new materialist perspectives can provide a post-anthropocentric conceptualisation of sustainability, which paves the way for a more relational ontology, one that could in turn create a pedagogical practice supporting sustainability.

It was a true pleasure working with Kassahun durng the last five years and I am convinced we will be hearing a lot from him in the future. A pdf of his dissertation can be found here>Kassahun Weldemariam_inlaga_med artiklar

Keywords: Sustainability, Anthropocentric, Post-anthropocentric, Assemblage, Subjectivity, Affect, Ontology, Epistemology, Agency, Becoming-With, Distributed Agency, Materiality

In search of healthy policy ecologies for education in relation to sustainability: Beyond evidence-based policy and post-truth politics

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A new paper just came out in ‘Policy Futures in Education’ that I co-authored with Robert Stratford critiquing evidence-based approaches to policy making in the context of (re)orienting education towards sustainability in times of post-truth and alternative facts. In the aper we pose that there is a rational assumption built into some research projects that policy contexts are influenced by the quality of the evidence. This is, at best, only somewhat true some of the time. Through policy ethnographies, two education researchers working in the context of sustainability discuss their experiences with evidence-based policy. Central to both accounts is how critical messages about such issues as race, wellbeing and sustainability can become diluted and even lost. In the existing ‘politics of unsustainability’, and at a time of ‘post-truth’ politics, these accounts also show the limits of evidence-based policy.

We argue that those working with ‘the evidence’ need to be open about how evidence-based approaches can end up supporting the ‘status quo’. Moreover, while approaches such as knowledge mobilisation emphasise the relational qualities of policy contexts, and the importance of simple compelling narratives for decision-makers, they, like many other practices, do not sufficiently theorise the power structures surrounding knowledge and the policy context. In addition to the careful use of evidence, we argue that there needs to be greater emphasis on building healthy policy ecologies – including far more emphasis on building critical and creative policy alternatives, especially in areas like sustainability and education.

The paper can be found/downloaded here: Healthy Policy Ecologies Paper

 

Keywords Neo-liberalism, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), policy, unsustainability, post-truth politics