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

Abstract

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.