Globalisation and education for sustainable development: exploring the global in motion

The article explores education for sustainable development (ESD) as a policy concept in different spaces and how it is re-articulated as part of a process of globalisation. The objective is to explore empirically an alternative set of logics in order to conceive of this process of globalisation. With this objective in mind, the article investigates articulations of ESD and sustainable development in Vietnamese and Thai policy-making, and reflects upon how these articulations can be seen to relate to globalisation. In so doing, it addresses concerns about the globalising potential of ESD within the field of environmental education research, and aims to open up for an alternative understanding of the processes associated with the rearticulation of ESD in different national education policy settings. The alternative conception that is put forward promotes an understanding of these re-articulations of ESD as contingent, opening up a space for contestation and counter-hegemonic articulations.     

The International Education Index: A global approach to education policy analysis,performance and sustainable development

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the world struggled to address growing educational inequalities and fulfil the commitment to Sustainable Development Goal 4, which seeks to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. The pandemic has exacerbated these inequalities and changed how education functions, moving to online and hybrid methods. The challenges in global education highlighted and worsened by the pandemic make it necessary to re-evaluate education systems and the policies in place to support access, quality and equal opportunity. This article focuses on analysing education policies at a national level. It tests a pilot policy analysis tool, the International Education Index (IEI), developed as a starting point to begin this reconsideration and create an accessible and comprehensive way to evaluate national education systems to inform decision-making and policies in the new context. This research uses Ireland and Northern Ireland to test the IEI pilot tool. The IEI consists of 54 questions across nine indicators, including institutional frameworks, education strategies, digital skills and infrastructure, twenty-first century skills, access to basic social services, adherence to international standards, legal frameworks, data gathering and availability and international partnerships. Countries can score 108 points to be categorised as having developed, emerging or nascent national education systems. Ireland scored 94 and Northern Ireland 81, indicating that they have developed national education systems.     

Education,population, environment and sustainable development

It is widely acknowledged that education and training have an important role in meeting the challenges of global environmental change. This paper looks at the way global concerns have emerged and evolved in recent decades, how they are interrelated, especially the population-environment interrelationships, and at the need for sustainable development. Population and environmental education have been two distinct educational responses, both fostered by international organizations, but now they need to be linked. The paper looks at the way geography, especially population geography, may offer integrating opportunities, through its academic scope, a wide range of spatial and time scales, and a consciousness of the great diversity of cultures, economies, polities and environments.

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Zusammenfassung Es ist allgemein bekannt, daß Bildung und Ausbildung eine wichtige Rolle bei der Reaktion auf weltweite Umweltveränderungen spielen. In diesem Artikel wird erörtert, wie weltweite Probleme in den letzten Jahrzehnten entstanden sind und wie sie sich weiterentwickelt haben, wie sie unter besonderer Beachtung der Beziehungen zwischen Bevölkerung und Umwelt miteinander zusammenhängen und wie die notwendige Entwicklung unterstützt werden kann. Bevölkerungslehre und Erziehung zum Umweltbewußtsein sind zwei voneinander getrennte bildungspolitische Antworten, die beide von internationalen Organisationen gefördert werden, nunmehr aber miteinander verbunden werden sollten. Der Artikel setzt sich damit auseinander, inwieweit die Geographie, besonders die Bevölkerungslehre, durch ihre akademische Reichweite Möglichkeiten zur Integration bietet, sich mit zeit- und raumbezogenen Dimensionen befaßt und ein Bewußtsein über die große Vielfalt an Kulturen, Wirtschaftssystemen, politischen Systemen und Umgebungen schafft.

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Résumé Il est universellement reconnu que l'éducation et la formation sont indispensables pour répondre aux défis du changement global de l'environnement. Le présent article examine la manière dont les problèmes globaux ont apparu et se sont développés au cours des dernières décennies, leurs relations mutuelles, particulièrement celles entre l'environnement et la population, et la nécessité d'un développement durable. L'éducation en matière de population et l'éducation relative à l'environnement sont deux réponses éducatives distinctes, toutes deux promues par les organisations internationales, mais à présent il paraît nécessaire d'établir un lien entre elles. On analyse, par ailleurs, la manière dont la géographie, en particulier la géographie de la population, peut offrir des possibilités d'intégration, grâce à sa portée théorique, un grand nombre d'échelles spatiales et temporelles, et une connaissance de la grande diversité des cultures, économies, politiques et environnements.

     

Education for sustainable development in Africa: a critique of regional agendas

Asia Pacific Education Review - Education is often perceived in policy agendas as playing a transformative role in realising sustainable development and the SDGs on the continent. The assumption is...     

Education for sustainable development,governmentality and Learning to Last

As Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) slowly moves up the UK Government's policy agenda, practical implementation issues are increasing in significance. This paper offers a retrospective reflective account of a major national ESD initiative, Learning to Last, funded by the Quality and Standards Directorate of the Learning and Skills Council. At the centre of the Learning to Last experience was a tension between a managerialist approach to project development, common within the Learning and Skills sector, and an ecological, networked and synoptic methodology more in keeping with and sympathetic to the values of ESD. Applying the concepts of ‘governmentality’ and new public management, Learning to Last is viewed as a target and output driven initiative offering restricted opportunities for creative development and conceptual learning. Only with a more reflective and reflexive engagement with sustainability and learning will the possibilities of achieving a more sustainable future and of negotiating our ‘society of government’ be realised.     

Education for sustainable development,natural capital and sustainability: Learning to Last

This paper explores the use of metaphor in public policy and learning as a context for a reflective discussion of a nationally funded initiative focusing on the dissemination of good practice in education for sustainable development in the UK’s post‐16 sector. Learning to Last was the first, and so far only, project of its kind. Its conception and management epitomised the use of the toolkit metaphor, and reinforced and reproduced the instrumental rationality characterising educational governance and public management in the UK. The potential for metaphor or metaphorical concepts such as natural capital to articulate and stimulate new ways of thinking and behaving or even possibly offering a glimpse of a paradigmatic shift in institutional policy and practice relating to education and sustainability was not fully realised.     

Education for sustainable development in early childhood education: a review of the research literature

The aim of the study is to describe and analyse research articles relating to the subject of education for sustainable development (ESD) for early childhood education (ECE), published during the years 1996–2013. This is done by answering three specific questions: (1) How is ESD defined by researchers in ECE? (2) What are the major research inquiries and results? (3) What does the research say about young children acting for change in relation to sustainability? Our analysis identified two different definitions of ESD: first, as a threefold approach to education based on questions concerning education about, in and for the environment; and, second, as an approach to education that includes three interrelated dimensions: economic, social and environmental. Two major research areas are identified in this study. The first area relates to how teachers understand ESD, while the second area focuses on how ESD can be implemented in educational practice. During the period studied, the research has evolved from teaching children facts about the environment and sustainability issues to educating children to act for change. This new approach reveals a more competent child who can think for him- or herself and make well-considered decisions. The decisions are made by investigating and participating in critical discussions about alternative ways of acting for change.     

Locating the global: culture,language and science education for indigenous students

The international literature suggests the use of indigenous knowledge (IK) and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) contexts in science education to provide motivation and self‐esteem for indigenous students is widespread. However, the danger of alienating culture (as knowledge) from the language in which the worldview is embedded seems to have been left out of the philosophical and pedagogical debates surrounding research and comment in the field. This paper argues that one of the main ways in which indigenous knowledge systems will survive and thrive is through the establishment of programmes taught through indigenous languages so that a dialectal relationship between language and knowledge is established that continues to act as the wellspring. The article concludes by reviewing the situation in Aotearoa New Zealand with respect to the indigenous population, Maori, and the recent science education initiatives in te reo Maori (Maori language).     

Procuring a sustainable future: an action learning approach to the development and modelling of ethical and sustainable procurement practices

This paper contributes to an understanding of the processes by which organisational actors learn how to affect positive and sustainable social change in their local region through action learning, action research and appreciative inquiry. The paper is based on a critically reflective account of key findings from an ongoing action research project, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The project is an attempt to alleviate poverty in the Leeds City Region through the identification and spread of ‘good practice’ in large local organisations. The paper is based on insights into the tensions involved in accomplishing such modes of action research and action learning in this particular context, and how these findings can relate to similar research in other domains of inquiry, action and cross-organisational learning. Through this, the paper discusses the inherent challenges faced when attempting to use action research and action learning approaches to help large organisations to learn and develop as ethical and sustainable agents.     

Education and language: A human right for sustainable development in Africa

Pre-colonial Africa was neither an educationally nor a technologically unsophisticated continent. While education was an integral part of the culture, issues of language identification and standardisation which are subject to contentious debate today were insignificant. Children learned community knowledge and history by asking questions instead of being taught in a hegemonic alien language. This article argues that education and development should take place in a broader context of human rights, and explores the links between three areas often dealt with separately, namely: language, education and development. The authors of this paper demonstrate that changing the face of the multi-dimensionalities of poverty within societies is possible only when education is constructed in a rights perspective over the favoured colonial languages, which are not an integral part of the culture and resources of a community. The authors make a distinction between the right to education and rights in education, the latter of which are found to be more significant for the challenges Africa faces. It is argued here that the elements of Amartya Sen’s “threshold” conditions for inclusion in human rights and self-development in education are essential, and that a more promising architecture of education would include what the authors term meta-narrative frameworks, i.e. interrelated policies. The authors contend that the neoliberal commodification of the knowledge sector has only exacerbated human rights and capabilities deprivation – which encompasses both human and income poverty.     

Negotiating knowledges abroad: non-Western students and the global mobility of knowledge

Taking the Institute for Housing Studies in Rotterdam as a case study, this paper aims to theorise the ways non-Western, international students construct and negotiate knowledges in Western institutions of higher education. It describes the types of knowledges these students identify as characteristic of their learning abroad, distinguishing between the curriculum, knowledge of cultural Others and ‘critical thinking’, and the strategies of incorporation, avoidance and resistance with which students negotiate these knowledges. These knowledges, if contested, are then theorised to facilitate these students’ entry into, and mobility within, globally dispersed epistemic communities.     

Culture,indigenous knowledge systems and sustainable development: A critical view of education in an African context

The article’s focus is the relationship between culture, indigenous knowledge systems (IKS), sustainable development and education in Africa. It analyzes the concept of sustainability with particular reference to education and indigenous knowledge systems. In particular the article analyzes the documents from the World Summit in Johannesburg in 2002 as well as from the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. Moreover, the article discusses South Africa’s Curriculum 2005 (C 2005) launched by the African National Congress (ANC) by focusing on the dilemmas of exclusively introducing Western-based scientific knowledge in a cultural context based on indigenous epistemology. The article concludes by calling for more research into the viability of indigenous knowledge systems as a potential tool in sustainable development.     

Education for sustainable development in Africa: The search for pedagogical logic

The United Nation's Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) is past its halfway milestone; yet, its overall impact on educational thinking and practice remains unclear in most places and regions of the world. While several efforts and programs are currently in place to promote and affirm the role of education in the global quest for sustainable development, most of these efforts remain largely unknown and invisible in most communities around the world. The Decade and ESD, arguably, are neither seen nor heard of in most of Africa. Most institutions, including schools, governments, businesses, civil society and individuals are yet to know and understand the role of education in the quest for sustainable development. The paper argues that in spite of the Decade and all the attention it is getting in some circles, the subject is muted in most educational policies and practices in Africa. In calling for more focused commitment to the roles of education in sustainable development in Africa, the paper also calls for a reconsideration of what sustainable development means, or might mean for Africans in their different places and cultures and to use that as a starting point for the exploration of more meaningful educational philosophies and pedagogies that responds to Africa's unique challenges.     

Education and poverty in the global development agenda: Emergence,evolution and consolidation

The objective of this paper is to analyse the role of education and poverty in the current global development agenda. It intends to analyse the emergence, evolution and consolidation of a global agenda, which attributes a key role to education in the fight against poverty. With this objective, the paper addresses four main issues: first, it analyses the context in which the emergence of the agenda must be placed, analysing specifically the changes generated by globalisation; second, it focuses on the role of the actors, and especially on the role of the World Bank in setting the agenda; third, it explains the consolidation of the agenda by the Education for All Conferences and the Millennium Development Goals; finally it presents some of the main limitations of the hegemonic agenda.     

A history of the future of higher education for sustainable development

Thirty years of academic dialogue and reinvention about environmental and sustainability education conceals the consistency of rhetoric that literature holds. This paper argues that higher education for sustainable development does not call for the invention of anything disconcertingly new. In fact, four simple, long‐standing concepts contribute most of the philosophy, disciplinary content and pedagogy required: liberal education, interdisciplinarity, cosmopolitanism and civics. A review is undertaken of the literature behind these ‘ideas neither young nor mature’ and a sustainability canon is derived that features integrated sciences, humanities and social sciences theory, engaging, active pedagogy and authentic external experiences.     

Representations of indigenous knowledges in secondary school science textbooks in Australia and Canada

In recent years there has been a growing recognition that presenting principally western perspectives in science texts is a form of ethnocentrism, racism or cultural imperialism. In order to address this problem, a number of science texts have appeared which attempt to incorporate greater diversity of knowledge types. This paper employs discourse analysis techniques to examine the approach taken to minority group knowledges in two recently published sets of junior secondary science texts, one used in Australia and the other in Canada, with a specific focus on the incorporation of indigenous knowledges into the texts. An evaluation is provided on the kinds of indigenous knowledges incorporated in the texts and the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches used.