David Selby

The Firm and Shaky Ground of Education for Sustainable Development.

This paper employs academic and parable forms to evaluate critically the strengths and weaknesses, potentials and lacunae of education for sustainable development (ESD) and other sustainability-related educations. The meteoric rise to prominence of ESD is first briefly reviewed, as is the firm ground it now stands upon as an international and national educational priority. The remainder of the paper explores the shaky ground of ESD: the fields reliance on a goal, sustainable development, which, in its by-and-large continued embrace of the growth principle, is a myopic response to the Earth condition; the fields embrace of an instrumentalist conception of nature when such a conception itself feeds unsustainability; the overly skills/training orientation of ESD and its stunted engagement with a range of key aspects of the human-nature relationship; the failure of ESD to realize its original breadth and promise in its marginalization of the voice of peace, social justice, anti-discriminatory, indigenous and futures educators as well as that of sustainability educators in the South; its adoption of an anachronistic ‘steady state’ conception of nature. Finally, it is suggested that sustainability-related education would be enriched and enlivened by fomenting a dynamic complementarity between notions of transience and sustainability

Runaway Climate Change as Challenge to the ‘Closing Circle’ of Education for Sustainable Development

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is the latest and thickest manifestation of the ‘closing circle’ of policy-driven environmental education. Characterised by definitional haziness, a tendency to blur rather than lay bare inconsistencies and incompatibilities, and a cozy but ill-considered association with the globalisation agenda, the field has allowed the neoliberal marketplace worldview into the circle so that mainstream education for sustainable development tacitly embraces economic growth and an instrumentalist and managerial view of nature that goes hand in glove with an emphasis on the technical and the tangible rather than the axiological and intangible. Runaway climate change is imminent but there is widespread climate change denial, including within mainstream ESD. A transformative educational agenda in response to climate change is offered here. Recent calls for the integration of climate change education (CCE) within mainstream education for sustainable development should be resisted unless the field breaks free of the ‘closing circle’.

Ready for the Storm: Education for Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation1

Incidences of disaster and climate change impacts are rising globally. Disaster risk reduction and climate change education are two educational responses to present and anticipated increases in the severity and frequency of hazards. They share significant complementarities and potential synergies, the latter as yet largely unexploited. Three dimensions of climate change education—understanding and attentiveness, mitigation and adaptation— are identified and explored as corresponding to key elements in disaster risk reduction education. While international bodies advocate the alignment of the two focuses, we are still only on the threshold of their alignment in practice within curriculum. Both focuses also align in their embrace of an interactive, experiential and participatory pedagogy. An educational contribution to a sustainable future must necessarily address disaster risk reduction and climate change.

Development education in policy and practice

Foreword: Global Learning in Europe: Looking Back and Moving Forward Helmuth Hartmeyer 1. Introduction: Transformative Learning in the Age of Neo-liberalism Stephen McCloskey PART I: SOFT VERSUS CRITICAL DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION 2. Soft versus Critical Global Citizenship Education Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti 3. Learning to Read the World? Educating for Active (Global) Citizenship in the Formal Curriculum Audrey Bryan 4. Typologies of Development Education: From Learning About Development to Critical Global Pedagogy Douglas Bourn 5. Critical thinking and Development Education: How do we develop meta-cognitive capacities? Roland Tormey PART II: DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION SECTORS 6. Young People and Development: The Role of Global Youth Work in Engagement and Learning Paul Adams 7. Moving Beyond Boundaries: Development Education in Initial Teacher Education Fionnuala Waldron 8. Strengthening Development Education Practice in the Higher Education Sector: Reimagining research Su-ming Khoo PART III: DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION & SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 9. Striking A Faustian Bargain? Development Education, Education for Sustainable Development and the Economic Growth Agenda David Selby and Fumiyo Kagawa 10. Development Education and Climate Change Glenn Strachan Part IV: NEW DEVELOPMENT PARADIGMS: LESSONS FOR DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION 11. Groping Towards a New Future: Educating for Paradigm Change Peadar Kirby 12. New Paradigms for Social Transformation in Latin America Ronaldo Munck 13. Political Society and Subaltern Social Movements (SSM) in India: Implications for Development/Global Education Dip Kapoor 14. The Deglobalisation Paradigm: A Critical Discourse on Alternatives Dorothy Grace Guerrero PART V: DEVELOPMENT EDUCATIONS SHIFTING POLICY LANDSCAPE 15. Development Education in a European Context Gerard McCann 16. Beyond the MDGs: Toward a new Development Framework Mwangi Waituru 17. Conclusion: Whither Development Education in a Shifting Policy Landscape? Stephen McCloskey

Striking a Faustian Bargain? Development Education, Education for Sustainable Development and the Economic Growth Agenda

Faustus is writ large in European mythology. A sixteenth-century German astronomer, he is reputed to have sold his soul to the devil for unlimited power. In modern English parlance, to ‘strike a Faustian bargain’ is to be willing to make questionable sacrifices for knowledge or power or influence, closing one’s eyes to the consequences.

Teetering on the Brink: Subversive and Restorative Learning in Times of Climate Turmoil and Disaster

Unchecked climate change poses a self-inflicted existential risk to humanity as it exacerbates the multiple-crisis syndrome facing global society. In international policy, education for sustainable development is widely flagged as transformative. To realize that transformative potential, sustainability educators are exploring the nexus between their field and that of transformative learning. They particularly call for a stretching of epistemology so that unsustainable practices are challenged, taken-for-granted thinking and assumptions disrupted, root causes of global dysfunction interrogated, values subjected to critical scrutiny, change potential of socio-affective learning unleashed, and paradigm shift thus catalyzed. The problem is the overall lack of consensus about what needs sustaining and what needs transforming. Seeking to address that problem, we call for subversive learning interrogating four key climate change drivers: economic growth, consumerism, denial, and climate injustice. We also call for restorative learning in three important areas: restoring nature intimacy, confronting despair, and reclaiming the good life.