Academics in higher education around the world indicate high levels of stress from multiple sources. The COVID-19 pandemic has only served to intensify stress levels. Adaptation and resilience are needed if academics, particularly those focused on education and teaching, are to endure, learn, and "bounce back" during this era of stress…

This paper examines the Confucian concept of learning, or xue ([character omitted]), from the perspective of ecological humanism. Through a comparative interpretation, this paper attempts to disclose the significance of Confucian xue conceived as a practice of aesthetic appreciation and creativity, emphasizing in particular its function within an…

Contemporary educational practices have been calling for pedagogical models that foreground flexibility, agency, ubiquity, and connectedness in learning. These models have, in turn, been stimulating redevelopments of educational infrastructure--with physical contours reconfigured into novel complex learning spaces at universities, schools,…

The earth is drowning in plastic waste. Yet, as the plastic waste crisis grows exponentially, responses to excess waste remain stuck around containment and management processes. These approaches fail to notice that plastics know no boundaries. We now encounter plastic rocks, plastic water, plastic bodies, plastic worlds spilling into oceans and…

This paper addresses the discussion on the Anthropocene in environmental education research. It aims to enrich and widen the debate about the appropriateness of humanist approaches to environmental education and sustainability. In response to criticism about anthropocentric responses to human-made environmental destruction, the authors introduce a…

This essay outlines some of the key themes and ideas developed in in the above title. These include: the influence of scientism and a "metaphysics of mastery" in late modern times; a phenomenology of nature that focusses on the native "occurring" of things in nature; the development of a notion of environmental consciousness in…

The loss of relational networks and life-sustaining capacities of the Earth resulting from the Anthropocene/Capitalocene provoke ambiguous pedagogical experimenting with the limits of the known. The Akokisa River of Texas is more than its extractive use-value based on humanist rationality. Water connector Ángel Faz approaches the River as more…

Although motivational theories agree that environmental factors (like interpersonal relationships and pedagogical practices) are crucial in shaping students' motivational development, few comprehensive conceptualizations of motivational contexts have been proposed. Instead, individual theories tend to focus on the contextual antecedents of the…

At the heart of sustainability is the relationship between humans and the planet. The binary of anthropocentric or ecocentric worldviews appears to be powerful in defining this relationship. Sustainability requires nuanced approaches which go beyond simple binaries, and therefore a dialectic approach which works to synthesise the binaries may be…

This article connects instrumental, emancipatory, and critical approaches to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) with the different cultural responses or grand narratives of the Anthropocene: eco-modernist, eco-catastrophist, and eco-socialist. The tensions between these different approaches are explained by ESD's reliance on the ideals of…

This article develops a model of education from Murray Bookchin's social ecology by demonstrating how "the economy," specifically growth and employment, intervenes between the environment and education, impeding the goal of environmental education. By reformulating Bookchin's central claim in terms of power, rather than domination, the…

The purpose of this communication is to explore possibilities for children's literature to enable futures learning. It introduces the ways in which two different frameworks might be used to analyse children's literature. The first framework draws upon the Earth Charter Principles (ECP) (Auld et al., 2021). The second framework brings together the…

The world is experiencing crises related to the cascading effects of anthropization. These crises result from imperialist and capitalist practices that categorize and exploit the other (e.g., the land, the water, and their resources and beings) for maximizing profit. Such malpractices have led to climate crises of drought, famine, and extinctions.…

Environmental changes are about to invade every aspect of human life (and all life) across the planet. Young people will be particularly affected by these changes; regions where large youth populations are projected to be present in the coming decades are among the most vulnerable to environmental problems. Many young people feel overwhelmed by…

Anthropologist, Tim Ingold, recounts that humans inhabit a familiar, yet evolving world -- stretched between 'the happened' and 'the not yet'. Despite efforts to the contrary, we can never fully be sure of its future configurations, making it difficult to determine how to solve yet-to-be-encountered problems, or how to skilfully navigate through…