In 2003 John Fien presented an argument for environmental education to encompass deep and wide caring for human and nonhuman nature (Fien, 2003). His philosophical discussion of care outlined work by Nel Noddings (1984; 1992). In this paper I continue that project by indicating how Noddings' work provides signposts for environmental educators to think about their students' relationships with the nonhuman natural world. I argue that one consequence of Noddings' conception of care is that advocacy for considering humans to be a part of nature might be counterproductive to developing a student's capacity to understand a caring relationship with nature. In conclusion I draw on the structure of a care ethic to suggest practical implications for environmental education and the development of a relational self.

Narrative is fundamental to our diverse capacities to remember, to provide an account of self, and to represent our actions, motivations and place in society. The narrative mode is concerned with central aspects of the human condition – commitments and personal agency; motivations and emotions; collective experiences and cultural histories and myths. As such it is concerned with relationships between people, their activities within particular places and the ethics that arise in these specific relationships. This paper explores the role of narrative as a pedagogical device and as a form of thinking and valuing for students to use in their everyday interactions. In particular, it considers why a combination of environmental narrative, drama and deep attentive reflection sits so well with the emerging pedagogies of “place”, and why this alliance is such an effective means for allowing individuals to experience, understand and value for themselves the entwined and sensorial connections that exist between people and place. Based on a year-long values education case study in eight primary schools, we describe and theorise about why such a narrative approach to pedagogy, when linked to deep attentive experiences in nature, is so effective in developing a new kind of place-based body/mind meaning-making and learning that inspires individuals to engage with both the inner and outer work of sustainability.

As social, economic and environmental issues have become more prominent in the 21st century, there has been increased critical scrutiny into the ways that outdoor learning interacts with sustainability issues and concepts. As a result, a number of discourses have emerged which interrogate human/nature relationships in traditional outdoor education and propose greater engagement with place-responsive or sustainable approaches. Drawing on research with teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand, this article explores possible intersections between sustainability education outdoor learning. Accordingly, this article focuses on two key ideas: First, the nexus of experience and place offers significant promise for educational endeavours that seek to educate for a sustainable future. Second, traditional conceptions of wilderness as a pedagogical site, can be problematic for outdoor education programs which seek to claim the ground of sustainability. While there is much that can be gained from journeys in remote pristine environments, not all of these experiences necessarily lead to the development of attitudes, understandings, skills, and motivation to live more sustainably. Furthermore, approaches to outdoor learning that seek to develop connection to and care for remote, pristine places, at the same time ignoring more local or impacted places, could present a dichotomous view of ‘nature’ to students, thereby disrupting efforts to educate for sustainability.

In 1993, John Fien wrote Education for the Environment: Critical Curriculum Theorizing and Environmental Education. Applying a critical perspective to his own ideas, he concluded the book with an examination of three criticisms that deep ecologists would make of critical environmental education. Acknowledging the validity of much of their case, he concluded that the critical curriculum theory of education for the environment proposed in the book was an incomplete one, and that “more theorizing, reflection, action, and more reflection again” would be necessary to develop the ideas more fully than they were. In this paper, which was the Professorial Lecture he presented on 14 May 2003, he returned to this task seeking to broaden the theoretical frameworks of environmental education to encompass deep and wide caring for human and non-human nature.

Field experiences for young children are an ideal medium for environmental education/education for sustainability because of opportunities for direct experience in nature, integrated learning, and high community involvement. This research documented the development - in 4-5 year old Prep children - of knowledge, attitudes and actions/advocacy in support of an endangered native Australian animal, the Greater Bilby. Data indicated that children gained new knowledge, changed attitudes and built a repertoire of action/advocacy strategies in native animal conservation as a result of participating in a forest field adventure. The curriculum and pedagogical features that supported these young children's learning include: active engagement in a natural environment, learning through curriculum integration at home and at school, anthropomorphic representations of natural elements, making connections with cultural practices, and intergenerational learning. The paper also highlights research strategies that can be usefully and ethically applied when conducting studies involving young children.

Empowering students to act in an environmentally responsible manner is being increasingly touted as a central goal of formal environmental education. Acting in a responsible manner requires the development of environmental knowledge as well as positive attitudes and values towards the environment along with other attributes. While some guidance about how to plan and teach environmental education is available in curriculum and policy documents, teachers are often either unfamiliar with such documents and/or unaware of the theories and pedagogy of environmental education (Cutter-Mackenzie & Smith, 2003; Eames, Cowie, & Bolstad, 2008). This paper offers a definition of environmentally responsible behaviour and identifies the role that knowledge could play when environmentally responsible action is taken by students that could be useful for teachers.

Three different lenses are used to examine the knowledge developed by 11-12 year old students and their subsequent actions during engagement in an environmental education programme (n=22). The lenses consist of a cluster of types of knowledge developed by Jensen (2002), a framework for analysing understandings of sustainability and the type of actions taken (Jensen & Schnack, 1997; Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2002).

The results suggest that these students developed different types of knowledge that informed the actions taken and that their actions can be categorised as action competence. It is also suggested that these types of knowledge need to be taught explicitly. A three part model is then proposed that could assist students to learn about the nature of action, enabling them to work towards potential solutions for complex environmental issues.

The findings from a study of how Green families construct and practise versions of an environmental ethic and ecopolitic in the home are suggestive of how environmental education in schools might be revised. In this study, the green home proved to be a very different form of environmental education and practice of sustainability. Children's environmental learning was closely associated with their doing of practical things in the home in relation to the everyday environmental problematic. But this embodied, situated and practical doing as learning hinged upon their parents' environmental commitments and the family's functioning as they were respectively “structured”—materially, symbolically, geographically and historically by the social relations and conditions of the home, availability of resources, school and community networks, and prevailing cultural climate. Hence, this study of household ecologies, or postmodern oikos, provides evidence and insights for the further development of environmental education curricula and pedagogical strategies, understandings of a range of factors influencing learners' environmental engagement and action and, consequently, ecologically focussed research endeavours.

In a study undertaken in Queensland, Australia, analysis of a survey that included both qualitative and quantitative questions revealed that, like their Japanese counterparts, early childhood teachers do not have well-developed ideas and practices in education for sustainability (EfS). Instead, they mainly practise traditional nature-based activities, such as gardening or playing outdoors, and teaching about resource conservation through books, posters or fact sheets. Teachers’ understandings of nature education, environmental education, and education for sustainability seem to influence their educational practices. Deeper understandings about sustainability are necessary to extend beyond such traditional practices. Even though national curriculum frameworks and guidelines point to the importance of sustainability within early childhood curriculum, these appear to be insufficient in strengthening early childhood teachers’ ideas of sustainability and how to practise it effectively. We suggest that it would be beneficial for early childhood teachers, both preservice and inservice, to have professional development opportunities that build deeper understandings of sustainability and its implementation in their settings.

Education for Sustainability (EfS) has an intimate relationship with professional employment as we seek to develop graduates who will take EfS values and understanding into their workplaces to build a sustainable future. The connection is through the capabilities that employers are wanting in the people they employ, and they are the outcomes of the educational experiences that we educators provide for the graduates. This article discusses the role of capabilities and their articulation in universities, particularly the types of capabilities sought by employers, both in Australia and more generally. We discuss similarities and differences articulated by academics and industry, and the implications for curriculum design and outcomes. In parallel, we note the discussion of capabilities associated with EfS and identify similarities with more broadly defined graduate capabilities. Research associated with the exploration of the breadth of the environment profession provides examples of the connections. These insights combine to highlight tension between what is sought by industry and what is needed to embed sustainable development actions into industry through the change agents graduated from our universities.

There has been a major effort in Australian academic circles over the past fifteen years to develop a critical discourse in environmental education curriculum, pedagogy, history, and research (Henry et al 1981, Di Chiro 1987, Gough 1987, 1994, Robottom 1987, Greenall 1987, Fien 1993 a,b, Greenall Gough 1993, Robottom & Hart 1993). This discourse is critical of ‘mainstream’ approaches to environmental education that are alleged to be positivist, behaviourist, masculinist, and instrumentalist. Internationally, environmental educators have also considered various shortcomings of environmental education. There is general concern about unrealised aspirations, unrealistic expectations, definitional problems, values issues, conceptual obfuscation and questionable research endeavours (Brennan 1979, Disinger 1979, 1985, Williams 1979, Baer 1980, 1981, 1985, Knapp 1983, Roth 1988, Iozzi 1989 a,b, Gigliotti 1990, Marcinkowski 1990, Wals, Beringer & Stapp 1990, Ham & Sewing 1992, Leming 1992, Pinar & Bowers 1992, Ramsey, Hungerford & Volk 1992). Consequently, it can be asserted there are practical deficiencies of a moral, social, political, and ecological nature. If so, one conclusion about the development of the field of environmental education is that it is problematic and often contradictory.

Community gardens fulfil many roles, including the reclamation of public space, community building, and the facilitation of social and cultural expression. This paper discusses a nexus between research and education for sustainability that evolved out of an examination of the role of community gardens in fostering community development and neighbourhood improvement in Sydney's Waterloo Public Housing Estate. It argues that they are also an educational resource providing a valuable platform for learning about multiple dimensions of sustainability.

The paperis based on interdisciplinary research undertaken by a team from UNSW's Faculty of the Built Environment and the School of Social Work. The findings of this research affirm the importance of community gardens for public housing tenants, and present the gardens and their associated activities as an effective platform for education for sustainability.

Outdoor and Environmental Education Centres provide programs that are designed to address a range of environmental education aims, and contribute broadly to student learning for sustainability. This paper examines the roles such Centres can play, and how they might contribute to the Australian Government's initiative in relation to sustainable schools. Interviews with the principals of 23 such Centres in Queensland revealed three roles or models under which they operate: the destination model; the expert/advisor model; and the partnership model. Principals' understandings of these roles are discussed and the factors that support or hinder their implementation are identified. It is concluded that while the provision of programs in the environment is still a vital role of outdoor and environmental education centres, these can also be seen as a point of entry to long-term partnerships with whole school communities.

Higher education institutions have an unavoidable responsibility to address the looming economic, environmental and social crises imperilling humans and ecosystems by placing ‘education for sustainability’ at the heart of their concerns. Yet, for over three decades, the practice of ‘higher education for sustainability’ (HEfS) has encountered significant barriers to implementation, begging the question as to why. Drawing on a diverse, interdisciplinary literature, we identify four structural impediments to implementing HEfS: (1) disciplinary contestation, which creates confusion over what ‘sustainability’ means; (2) institutional fragmentation, which prevents the interdisciplinary dialogue that sustainability demands; (3) economic globalisation, which transforms higher education into just another market opportunity; and (4) ‘fast and frugal’ habits of reasoning, which steer time-pressed academics towards poorly integrated decisions and unsustainable positions. Our analysis highlights that wider structural change within and beyond the academy will be required if higher education institutions are to meet their responsibilities and drive the necessary social transformation.

This article is a small piece of a much larger and still evolving project. Herein we focus on six touchstones for wild pedagogies. The article begins with a short orientation to the larger ideas behind the project and then focuses on exploring six current touchstones with a view towards early childhood environmental educators. The six explored here are: (1) agency and the role of nature as co-teacher; (2) wildness and challenging ideas of control; (3) complexity, the unknown, and spontaneity; (4) locating the wild; (5) time and practice; and (6) cultural change.

Sustainability education competes for curricular space, both in schools and in teacher education. Opportunities and barriers for the inclusion of sustainability education in an Australian university primary teacher education program are examined in this article. The study focused on the roles, practices and perceptions of teacher educators in promoting sustainability education. Three focus groups were conducted with members of faculty staff from each of the K–6 Key Learning Areas to gather data, which were analysed according to three frameworks: espoused/aspirational and actual practices of staff members; barriers to and affordances for teaching sustainability education; and the nature of initiatives, in terms of teaching/learning activities, assessment tasks, and resources. Beyond the Social Sciences, and Science and Technology, we found that inclusion of sustainability education is somewhat sporadic. The article proposes some ways forward to promote and abet sustainability education in a tertiary context.

Over the last three decades, scientists have uncovered the extent of human impacts on the earth's operating systems with increasing clarity and precision. These findings have prompted scientific claims that we have transitioned out of the Holocene and into the Anthropocene epoch in the earth's geological history (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000). At the same time, the traditional humanist underpinnings of the university have been eroded by the ongoing digitisation, massification, and decentralisation of higher education. This article argues that higher education has a crucial role to play in responding to the Anthropocene thesis, which at the same time provides a powerful impetus for reimagining the university through posthumanist concepts. In developing this analysis, conceptual distinctions are drawn between visions of hope and disaster, the local and the regional, dwelling and construction, and emplacement and displacement in the context of university learning environments. The learning environment is specifically addressed throughout as a fluid and transitional space for experimenting with concepts and practices that operate outside of humanist constructs and disciplinary boundaries. As the very idea of ‘the university campus’ threatens to become an anachronism, the author concludes with a speculative proposition for the reimagining of the university in the Anthropocene era.

For many children across the globe, whether in low or high income nations, growing up in the 21st century will mean living in overcrowded, unsafe and polluted environments which provide limited opportunity for natural play and environmental learning. Yet Agenda 21, the Habitat Agenda and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child all clearly articulate the importance of urban environments as the context for supporting children's sense of place, community identity and empathy with the natural world. I will argue in this paper that these attributes are all key drivers for supporting children in their role as future decision makers and environmental stewards. Extending Winnicotts' concept of “holding environments” beyond the social and cultural aspects of communities as sites for placemaking I draw a link to the value of botanical gardens and other green spaces in cities as the “holding environments” for children's environmental learning. I will construct an argument around the premise that to participate in, and contribute to, global sustainability - our children need places and the opportunity to engage, connect and respond to nature.

For children, environmental issues have become part of their formal and informal educational lives. The merging of the terms environment and education in the 1970s has also witnessed an emerging degree of pessimism through bringing the plight of the environment to the educational arena of children. Much of the discourse surrounding sustainable development is premised on a negative outlook regarding the state of the environment. It is these types of negative messages on which this article focuses. This paper suggests that while attempting to educate future generations about environmental issues, environmentalism may have also assisted in developing a generation of children who have not only become apathetic to environmental issues but also lost in a confusing muddle of “learned hopelessness’.

This paper explores appropriate disciplinary content for generalist sustainability degrees, based on two recent surveys. A questionnaire was used to extract from a multidisciplinary, largely academic audience – all of whom share an interest in sustainability – their views as to the disciplinary knowledge that a university-based sustainability education should include. This was undertaken because the current focus in sustainability education literature on generic skills and pedagogical method provides little insight to assist curriculum developers with disciplinary content. While the sample was limited, respondents came from a diverse group of disciplines and thus supply a broad perspective to curriculum design. Recommended teaching methods were also captured, for both undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as the academic backgrounds of the participants for the purposes of investigating bias. The findings were compared with curricula from existing Australian coursework programs and showed that a slight rebalancing towards the human sphere is necessary.