Towards using transformative education as a benchmark for clarifying differences and similarities between Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development

Abstract

The UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) charges educators with a key role in developing and ‘securing sustainable life chances, aspirations and futures for young people’. Environmental Education (EE) and ESD share a vision of quality education and a society that lives in balance with Earth’s carrying capacity, even as they differ in terms of expectations of how that vision is realized, and what might need to be balanced. Rather than treat EE and ESD as sparing partners or fellow travellers towards the same destination, this paper analyses EE and ESD from the perspective of transformative educational goals. Using these goals as a benchmark transcends immediate problems with either form of education, while also helps to clarify policies and practise formations, appropriate to a diversity of educational contexts.

Keywords:

• environment and development
• transformative education
• environmental education
• education for sustainable development
• policy-making

Notes

1. Expressed by some governments in their submissions to UNESCO regarding the DESD.

2. Based on the documents analysed in this section: UN 1972, 1987, 1992a, 1992b; UNESCO 1969, 2006, UNESCO-UNEP 1977.

3. This analysis is guided by two UNESCO documents that shaped EE and ESD interpretations at the political level.