This paper is framed as an email conversation between the authors, a lifespan developmental psychologist with expertise in the field of wisdom and an educational scientist with expertise in the field of giftedness. We discuss how giftedness is defined and whether the definition, and the concept in general, is still useful in today's world. We draw…

What are consequential world problems? As "grand societal challenges", one might define them as problems that affect a large number of people, perhaps even the entire planet, including problems such as climate change, distributive justice, world peace, world nutrition, clean air and clean water, access to education, and many more. The…

Purpose: To highlight that, for higher education (HE) to fulfil its role and provide societies with the required knowledge and competencies that will enable a sustainable future, through research, education and campus operations, it needs to cooperate and promote interdisciplinarity within the sector and with society at large.…

The United Nation's Sustainable Development Goal 8 (SDG8) emphasizes decent work and the need to generate employment for vulnerable groups such as women, youth, and low-income rural and urban residents. Though extended retirement age policies to sustain workforce productivity are promulgated across OECD states, within SDG8 there is no evident…

This article explores the history of the home economics/family and consumer sciences (HE/FCS) profession, a field that arose from the synergy created by the 20th-century Industrial Revolution (late 1800s and early 1900s). The profession was intended to strengthen and protect the home and family from the vagaries of scientific and technological…

Education plays a vital role in addressing the issues associated with the global climate crisis. This paper provides a brief background of the inception of environmental education and reveals that the literature shows that environmental curriculum is not being uniformly implemented in schools. In the interview that follows, Dr. Dianne Saxe, former…

The purpose of this viewpoint is to consider the impact of the current COVID-19 crisis on the educational prospects of young children attending early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. Studies show that health pandemics and environmental, political, and socio-economic crises jeopardize children's development and education. It is likely…

In this response article, we explain why sustainability issues are often interpreted as 'wicked' or unstructured problems and focus on the consequences for education and societal transformation in view of sustainable development. Drawing on Funtowicz and Ravetz' (1993) fourfold 'facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions…

This issue is particularly timely, in its plea to the field to understand that human learning and development have always been on the move--always migrating--even if and when we construct sedentarist bias and territorial boundaries of the nation-state as normative or when we remember or remake as "ambulatory we's" as we engage in…

How does the teaching of climate change and sustainability fit into the teaching of the traditional content and skills of the core science strands? In this article, Rosemary Hipkins responds to this question that was asked by a teacher who is concerned that complex context that dominates the narrative of teaching can cause confusion for students…

Across the nation, troves of college students disenroll prior to graduation; students who do graduate often leave campus still searching as if something is missing, inadequate, and deficient. Indeed, something is missing and unsustainable in this malaise. Drawing on Tia Brown McNair, "et al." (2016), who call for student-ready campus…

Three decades have passed since approximately 1,700 scientists signed the "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity" highlighting severe environmental problems and trends affecting local and global communities. To reverse the situation, their 1992 Warning argued we need to change our behaviour. In 2017, a larger group issued a second…

Green and sustainable chemistry (GSC) will become ever more central to the study of chemistry. This is demonstrated by commitments from the American Chemical Society, particularly the Committee on Professional Training and the Green Chemistry Institute, and the United Nations (UN Sustainable Development Goals), which underscore the urgent need for…

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are viewed in the context of Johan Rockström's work on planetary boundaries at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. This work sets a double challenge to educational policy and practice: to embrace and help achieve the Goals, but also to work towards a deeper change in consciousness which can reconcile people…

Shi Gendong wrote this essay in response to the topic "Even Laureates Were Beginners Once: Lessons Learned Along the Way," which was the title of the Laureate Panel at the Kappa Delta Pi Convocation in October 2017.