Normality is imminently catastrophic. Climate change is a contemporary instantiation of the perpetual sense of crisis that characterises the human condition, and concepts such as sustainability and resilience serve as regulative ideals (cf. beauty, perfection, and truth) in the fight against ubiquitous unsustainability. Unsustainability is an…

The devotion of this special issue of EER to the language of environmental and sustainable developmental education (SDE) serves as a timely reminder that SDE cannot simply be seen as a culturally neutral or value-free package that can be "delivered". In a variety of ways, contributors to this volume address the issues involved in re-engineering…

Sustainable development can remain a regulative ideal for environmental educators with the acknowledgement that it has no absolute legitimation and that human reflexivity remains capable of reworking the cultural traditions that have shaped it. Claims that the quest for holism remains one voice in a continuing dialogue about the environment and…

Addresses the issues involved in re-engineering the discourse of environmental education--and education more broadly--towards an overriding concern with sustainable development. These approaches assume certain epistemological positions with regard to the language and referent to meaning. Sketches out a possible typology of such positions and…

Defines a weak conception as one that is inconsistent or unclear in the field of environmental education. A strong conception takes a broad view of literacy and acknowledges its full ramifications with regard to environmental education. (SAH)