Abstract
The crises societies face today contribute to a rather challenging life setting that demands in-depth reflection, daring new thinking, and change urgently. Transformative education for a sustainable future is needed today more than ever before; the aim of this paper is an exploration of its goal and pedagogy. By drawing on diverse bodies of knowledge, including the structure-agency debate and the theory of critical pedagogy, this paper critically discusses Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and its goal of sustainable development. It identifies areas where ESD needs enhancement given the present socio-economic and cultural context and ultimately proposes the transformation of ESD to Education for Eco-communities—which highlights the need for community-centered approaches, knowledge, and observation of natural laws, sociological imagination, and political acumen—to render it better suited for the challenges of the 21st century.
Highlights
Contemporary societies face many crises, amongst them an ecological, economic, cultural, and, most recently, a health crisis
It starts with a brief discussion of Environmental Education (EE) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) goals and pedagogy. It critically discusses the goal of ESD, i.e., sustainable development, highlighting areas where amendments or more radical interpretations may be needed. It subsequently explores the implications of these insights for EE/ESD and concludes by proposing a new framework for environmental education for future societies, with the name Education for Eco-communities
Building on the arguments developed in the previous sections, I argue that the present context of crises, urgency, differently understood sustainable development, knowledge society, and individualism calls for a greater emphasis on the philosophical role of education [31], which should be made practical through its “marriage” with socio-political analysis [52,61,63,74]
Summary
Contemporary societies face many crises, amongst them an ecological, economic, cultural, and, most recently, a health crisis. A sense of risk and urgency predominates present times [1] They are signaling that immediate changes in our societies are needed in order to avoid the worse consequences of these crises. It starts with a brief discussion of EE and ESD goals and pedagogy It critically discusses the goal of ESD, i.e., sustainable development, highlighting areas where amendments or more radical interpretations may be needed. It subsequently explores the implications of these insights for EE/ESD and concludes by proposing a new framework for environmental education for future societies, with the name Education for Eco-communities
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