Making an adequate response to our deteriorating environmental situation is a matter of ever increasing urgency. It is argued that a central obstacle to achieving this is the way that scientism has become normalized in our thinking about environmental issues. This is taken to reflect on an underlying "metaphysics of mastery" that vitiates proper…

This paper proposes how the theoretical framework of ecological dynamics can provide an influential model of the learner and the learning process to pre-empt effective behaviour changes. Here we argue that ecological dynamics supports a well-established model of the learner ideally suited to the environmental education context because of its…

In this paper, the author reviews "Sense & Sustainability: Educating for a Circular Economy," by Ken Webster and Craig Johnson. He reviews the core text that underpins the work of the education team at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/). He shows that while it is strong on some technical aspects of…

Modern zoological gardens have invested substantial resources in technology to deliver environmental education concepts to visitors. Investment in these media reflects a currently unsubstantiated belief that visitors will both use and learn from these media alongside more traditional and less costly displays. This paper proposes a model that…

Place-based ecocritical pedagogy (PBEP) has been a key part of ecocriticism since the 1980s. In the last 10 years, the critical, theoretical, scientific and philosophical assumptions with which it has been associated have been subject to sustained critique, and yet PBEP remains the dominant model in pedagogical thinking within the field. In…

This contribution provides an "outside" commentary on several of the articles provided in this special issue on environmental education and education in the context of sustainability in Denmark and Sweden. Although there is no uniform position or shared single outlook expressed in the articles in this special issue, there are some re-current…

Badiou's ontological work draws attention to multiplicities--the oneness of ontology, which he explains can only become ontologically differentiated into events or sites through political, artistic or amorous practices that philosophies can think and invent from. He also draws attention to the fusion of events and sites, and he explains that…

This response article written from "outside" the Swedish-Danish contexts of this special issue considers how we might highlight and make additional ecocentric meaning of some of the terms most frequently used in this collection. In the first instance my focus is on "meaning" but this is expanded to include other terms such as valuing, values,…

This article is a transcript of the author's Keynote Address to the Fourth World Environmental Education Congress, Durban, July 2007. He has been asked to speak about environmental education research since Tbilisi, to explore what environmental education researchers might learn from this work, and look ahead to the challenges that now face them as…

This paper responds to a keynote paper presented by William Scott at the 2007 World Environmental Education Congress held in Durban, South Africa. The keynote address reviewed 30 years of environmental education research. In this response to William Scott's paper I contemplate the way in which environmental education research may enable…

In William Scott's plenary address at the World Environmental Education Conference, he expressed concerns about the relevance of environmental education research in a world facing global environmental and demographic change. In responding to Scott's concerns, I argue that addressing challenges related to development and the environment requires…

Can we avoid inheriting serious issues from research related to environmental education when the researcher community is addressing education for sustainable development? This paper identifies and discusses three main issues: if an explicit and coherent concept of environmental education or education for sustainable development is missing; if the…

This paper engages questions about ends in environmental education research. In doing so, I argue that such questions are essentially normative, and that normative questions are underrepresented in this field. After cautioning about perils of prescribing research agendas, I gently suggest that in environmental education key normative questions…

A growing body of literature on community gardening, watershed restoration, and similar "civic ecology" practices suggests avenues for integrating social and ecological outcomes in urban natural resources management. In this paper, we argue that an environmental education programme in which learning is situated in civic ecology practices also has…

The Japanese government provided various political opportunities for non-governmental groups and individuals in Japan to "jointly propose" policy on education and sustainable development at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg, 2002. These opportunities resulted in the emergence of the Japanese education for sustainable…