Explores the meaning of sustainable development from the economic and ethical perspectives. Argues that education for sustainability programs ought to acknowledge and address questions raised by these two perspectives. Concludes that the goals of environmental education need to be reconceptualized, continually and reflexively, in response to the…

Reviews some problems with the notion of sustainable development, as a policy, as the touchstone of environmental education, and explores understanding sustainability as a frame of mind. At the heart of this interpretation of sustainability lies the notion of a right relationship with nature which conditions attitudes towards the environment and a…

Sustainable development can remain a regulative ideal for environmental educators with the acknowledgement that it has no absolute legitimation and that human reflexivity remains capable of reworking the cultural traditions that have shaped it. Claims that the quest for holism remains one voice in a continuing dialogue about the environment and…

Describes an inquiry into education for environmental literacy by a group of secondary school science teachers in the UK. Using participatory action research approaches, explores ways of maintaining and enhancing the integrity of their subject discipline yet contributing to education for sustainable development. Teachers found that the approach…

This paper views the concept of natural capital from an economist's perspective. It begins by drawing on historical debates in economics on the nature of capital. These serve to identify central issues to do with the relationship between theory, empirics and method in the way in which the concept of capital is deployed in economic discourse. It is…

This note puts the research project which led to this Special Issue in the context of developments in and around environmental policy over the past two decades, from the perspective of someone closely involved. It links political and institutional problems over sustainable development to the changing role and authority of science in contemporary…

This response to McKenzie suggests that the issues of representivity, legitimacy and politics, inscribed within an institutional continuism characteristic of modernity within the McKenzie discourse, could well be recast within a reflexive view informed by insights derived with developing social theory. It briefly overviews the struggle for human…

Any commitment to education for sustainability assumes that teaching and learning can reduce or prevent damage to the biosphere. However, such an assumption remains deeply problematic. David Gruenewald's is only one of several possible epistemological positions. This article discusses the variety of such positions, arguing for that which might…

The paper discusses the 'value-through-utility' argument as a key ingredient of environmental educators' interests in traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), and examines some of the epistemological and philosophical tensions it generates in employing TEK within the context of learning with sustainability in mind. In an earlier article (Reid et…

Evoking a concern for intergenerational equity and claiming that the bounty and beauty of Earth have become diminishing prospects, I introduce the Earth Charter as an expression of the hopes of diverse communities around the globe. I argue that the Charter deserves educators' attention as an integrated vision of social justice, peace, and…

An important final step in the life cycles of programs and their evaluation involves assessing new programs' or innovations' sustainability. This review and synthesis of 19 empirical studies of the sustainability of American and Canadian health-related programs examines the extent of sustainability achieved and summarizes factors contributing to…

The declaration of the "United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development" (ESD), Resolution 57/254, February 2003, provides the best yet occasion for higher education institutions (HEIs) to "green" their curricula. The idea for the Decade emerges from a progression of high-level international conferences,…

As a mature trainee about to embark on a postgraduate certificate of education (PGCE) course as an early-years specialist, the author has been thinking about how she will approach her science teaching, and how it will fit with her beliefs about the importance of education for sustainable development (ESD). In researching how she could go about…

This paper describes an exploratory research project conducted with forty-five technological studies teachers in Ontario concerning their understanding and perceptions of the concept of sustainable development. The results indicate that pre-service teacher education programs need to spend more.

The goal of education for sustainability (EFS) is "to develop in young people and adults new knowledge and new ways of thinking needed to achieve economic prosperity, participate democratically, secure justice and equity, and all the while regenerate the health of the ecosystems, the gift upon which all life and all production depend." The…