Science education is increasingly integrating a focus on socio-scientific issues. Policy makers and scholars also suggest education for sustainable development (ESD) is important for tackling current and future sustainability issues. ESD may foster students' action competence in sustainable development (ACiSD; knowledgeability, willingness,…

Transformative teacher education can support educational experiences which provide the opportunity for pupils to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes to contribute towards tackling the significant sustainability issues with which we are faced. It is argued that for professional development programmes to be effective they need to improve…

Evaluations of environmental education (EE) programmes and resources are becoming increasingly visible and important. While benefits accrue through evaluation, many programmes and resources have yet to realise these. Issues such as a lack of clear objectives, reliance on traditional, summative approaches and inattention to context have prevented…

This article describes a research project that aimed to classify different types of sustainability-related school tasks in terms of two central approaches in primary school education: action-based and task-based learning. Using a textbook analysis approach, the article clarifies implicit and explicit forms of sustainability education in school…

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in pre-school children's meaning-making and learning in education for sustainability. Young children should be recognized as "agents for change" and active participants in their own day-to-day practices. Such issues are thoroughly discussed in the early childhood education for…

Our paper traces the history and progressive development of environmental education and education for sustainable development (ESD) in Sweden and Denmark. Our main focus is on work in primary and lower secondary schools as part of a search for trends of international interest related to the conceptualisation and practice of environmental education…

The last two decades have seen increased threats to agricultural landscapes in Israel. Key factors include population growth, strong pressure from construction entrepreneurs and possible profit to land owners who benefit from a legal conversion of farmland into lands allocated for construction. While each Israeli elementary school student used to…

Education is presented with a challenge when faced with criticism of modern science and adoption of a pluralistic view of environmental education and education for sustainable development. In dealing with this challenge, a practical understanding inspired by the later works of Ludwig Wittgenstein is suggested as a complement to more traditional…

Reviews some problems with the notion of sustainable development, as a policy, as the touchstone of environmental education, and explores understanding sustainability as a frame of mind. At the heart of this interpretation of sustainability lies the notion of a right relationship with nature which conditions attitudes towards the environment and a…

Addresses three issues: (1) the nature and importance of an eco-justice pedagogy; (2) how an eco-justice pedagogy differs from the recommendations of critical pedagogy theorists; and (3) the reforms that need to be undertaken in teacher education in order for teachers to balance critical inquiry with helping students recognize and participate in…

The Dearing Report emphasized the idea of a 'learning society' as the new context of UK higher education, but conceived this on a model of adaptivity to economically- and technologically-driven change. While there are real shifts in social relations with which universities have to reckon, they can be understood on a much richer model of…

Discusses whether the concept of education for sustainable development fosters reform in schools. Bases the discussion upon reflection on social challenges in education, a brief presentation of three concepts of environmental education (OECD Project 'Environment and School Initiatives' (ENSI), Action Competence Model, Socio-ecological…

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…

Critiques one widely held idea about sustainable development and advances an approach to thinking about issues of sustainable development and learning, including formal education. This approach employs a metaphor for possible human interactions with non-human nature that is derived from the world of financial management. (Author/MM)

Offers comments based on three questions as an immediate response to the articles in this special issue: (1) What's in a name?; (2) What is possible in education for sustainable development?; and (3) Rather than what education might do for sustainable development, what might sustainable development do for education? (Author/MM)