This paper documents a research journey that was initially undertaken to escape the feelings of tension and dissatisfaction that I had experienced as a secondary school teacher. The paper identifies the many influences that have guided the course of my continuing research journey. Philosophically, my research has taken me from viewing the world and my place in it from a narrow and authoritarian Western perspective through to a more inclusive and more democratic non-Western perspective. This shift in perspective initially resulted in changes to my educational theory and practice as manifested in the evolution of an environmental education program in a Melbourne secondary school. More recently my research perspective has again shifted, enabling me to pursue an opportunity to not only teach in, but more importantly also to learn in, a different cultural context. In both Melbourne and Manila, the transformations have come about by sharing ‘new’ ways of seeing and doing.

Rapid changes to resource and environmental management systems are occurring in Australia. These include increased emphasis on a whole-of-ecosystem approach, adaptive management, and community participation in decision-making. The need to respond to these rapid changes raises new educational challenges, which are being addressed in the Resource and Environmental Management program at Macquarie University through a round table exercise in environmental decision-making. Using an environmental flow allocation scenario, with a combination of face-to-face meetings and online tasks, this role-play activity requires students to assume a stakeholder role, formulate a position paper, question the views of other stakeholders, and negotiate to reach a consensus-based outcome. A key outcome is the learners' active engagement in an authentic task that exposes them to many of the uncertainties they will face in professional practice.

Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring, an exposé of the perils of aenal spraying of pesticides in the post-war years, was first published forty years ago, in 1962. Views about the book and its impact vary considerably. This paper takes a critical look at some of the claims made by her supporters, in her name, about the role and value of science. Carson is highly critical of some aspects of science and of some scientists, however, I argue that Carson did not argue against the value of science as a way of knowing. Her message that it is the misuse of science, sustained by individual greed and market forces, that is the problem, has been lost, deliberately or accidentally.

In this essay I suggest that the practice of environmental education research might be improved by efforts to identify what Jon Wagner (1993, p. 16) calls the ‘blank spots’ and ‘blind spots’ that configure the collective ignorance of environmental education researchers. In Wagner's terms, what we know enough to question but not answer are our blank spots; what we do not know well enough to even ask about or care about are our blind spots-areas in which existing theories, methods, and perceptions actually keep us from seeing phenomena as clearly as we might. By way of example, I argue that much research on significant life experiences does little to reduce ignorance in environmental education. I conclude by briefly appraising some strategies that might help environmental education researchers to recognise ways in which the field's dominant research traditions and models produce partialities and distortions.

This study's primary aim was to address the lack of accessible information about successful government sector programs in environmental education. In doing so it also explored the role of conservation agencies in schools by quantifying the environmental education resources used and preferred by teachers, and by determining the factors that influenced conservation agencies in the developing these preferred resources. Eighty seven percent of teachers stated they used resources from conservation agencies and sixty three percent of these were from government conservation agencies. Teachers were highly selective of the resources used. Interviews with people involved in developing and implementing the programs most often preferred showed a high level of expertise involved developing such programs. However responses also raised questions about the role of conservation agencies in agenda setting, whether conflicts occur between corporatisation and environmental education, and the degree of fragmentation and territoriality between agencies. It is concluded there are limits to the role conservation agencies can play in school environmental education and that there needs to be greater cooperation in providing school environmental education resources.

The problem of climate change is complex, global, and long-term, and therefore difficult to grapple with for politicians, scientists, teachers, and students alike. Teachers in particular face the problem of presenting climate change in a way that is not abstract and distant. To engage the intellect as well as emotions, students need to feel personally involved. One way to achieve this personal involvement is to link climate change to students' individual lives. Such a relationship can be created using a personal greenhouse gas budget, comprising ail emissions caused by a student over one year. A personal greenhouse gas calculator was developed at the School of Physics, University of Sydney, in the form of a computer spreadsheet, and applied in university teaching. This calculator does not only address emissions from energy use, but also those emissions embodied in goods and services. Embodied emissions are often ignored when climate change is related to lifestyles, As its normative part, the calculator states a benchmark of 3.5 t CO2 per person per year, based on the principle of global equity and sustainability. First experiences show that most students agree with that benchmark, and accept responsibility for embodied emissions. However, their own emissions results exceed by far the equitable and sustainable budget. This experience triggers various feelings, ranging from surprise and motivation, to guilt, denial, self-defence, cynicism, anger, and frustration. In contrast to a model where teaching is seen as transmission of information, this personal and provocative approach creates an emotional response, which affects memory, which in turn holds out the promise of long-term change.

This paper considers the role of rangers and education officers who present and represent their park on school trips to national parks, and their interactions with teachers who organise those trips. These shared encounters are commonplace events. They have an important potential and actual role in environmental education, but have not been the subject of much research. Both the teachers' environmental education objectives and the possibilities offered by parks are wide: nature study, ecology, parks as natural and cultural heritage, land management and community issues, recreational activities and their consequences. However this breadth of potential activity possibly exacerbates a gap between the two cultures that meet on such encounters, a gap that needs to be addressed if the participants are to be able to maximise their shared and separate concerns.

Using semi-structured interviews, our research looked at the strengths and limitations of several school visits for both teachers and ranger. In this paper we report particularly on the importance of the ranger in the process. We suggest that the role of the ranger is an undervalued and under-supported link in effective environmental education.

The creation of meaning is both intrinsic and extrinsic to environmental learning. In this paper I call attention to the process of how language practices and Imagination are important in constituting environmental meanings, as stories of the places in which we live. A concept of landshaping is introduced as a conceptual tool for thinking about the agentic construction of environmental meanings. Research data collected In north Queensland show that individual subjectivities do not necessarily align with the binary thought lines of human identity (‘us’) and nature (‘not us’) commonly reproduced within environmental education. Ideas of the natural can be problematic in environmental learning, particularly in cross-cultural education experiences. Landshaping can be used as a research strategy and as a pedagogical technique for revealing diversities and illuminating complexities in how we as individuals, and together, create environmental understandings for ourselves.

This study evaluated the current level of environmental concern amongst business school students, and attempted to determine if the personal characteristics of respondents (namely, their nationality, gender and age) were reliable predictors of scores. Two hundred students in three nations (Australia, France and Singapore) were surveyed, using a modified version of the Environmental Concern Scale originally developed by Weigel and Weigel (1978).

It was found that, in general, students displayed a relatively high level of environmental concern. However, whilst substantial differences in mean scores were not found between all three nationalities, the results did show that statistically significant differences exist between at least two countries – the Australian and Singaporean samples.

There was no statistically significant link between gender and environmental concern. However, the results did indicate a significant correlation with age, with older students displaying higher levels of environmental concern than their younger counterparts.

As never before in history, common destiny beckons us to seek a new beginning…. This requires a change of mind and heart. It requires a new sense of global interdependence and universal responsibility. We must imaginatively develop and apply the vision of a sustainable way of life locally, nationally, regionally, and globally. Our cultural diversity is a precious heritage and different cultures will find their own distinctive ways to realize the vision. We must deepen and expand the global dialogue that generated the Earth Charter, for we have much to learn from the ongoing collaborative search for truth and wisdom (The Earth Charter, The Way Forward).

Such advancement of high-minded values, such changes of mind and heart, and such senses of interdependence and responsibility across culture can only be achieved through education. Realising culturally rooted visions of sustainability and searching for cross-cultural collaboration is, inherently, a process of education. The Earth Charter Initiative has said from the beginning that the Earth Charter is an educational resource of significant value.

The art and science of teaching about, from, with, and for the Earth Charter offers a promising pedagogy for exploring such shared values and global ethics. Many of the problems we face are ethical problems. Therefore, the solutions must be solutions to which ethics point.

From 8-10 May 2002, the United Nations General Assembly met in a Special Session on Children. Representatives from more than 180 countries agreed on 21 new goals in the areas of education, health, combating AIDS and protecting children against abuse, exploitation and violence (Reuters 2002), The Assembly set six new targets aimed at meeting the goal of ‘quality basic education for all children’. In this paper we critically examine the strategies that the UN identified to ensure that the targets are met, in the light of our experiences researching and writing a report for the UK Department for International Development (DFID) on mainstreaming environmental education.

At the Special Session, held in New York, children and heads of state evaluated progress towards achieving the 27 goals set at the 1990 World Summit for Children (UNICEF 2002a). The Special Session on Children was preceded by a three-day Children's Forum ‘for those most directly affected by the decisions made at the conference’ (UNICEF 2002b). As well as 350 children from more than 150 countries (reported elsewhere as ‘376 children and young adults from 115 countries’ (MacCentral 2002) there were ‘2,000 representatives of more than 800 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including many of UNICEF's partners in the field’ (UNICEF 2002b). The claim that the Forum was attended by ‘those most directly affected by the decisions’ is at best pious hope and at worst pure spin, but the size and scale of the event merits consideration by those working for and with children around the world.

When I first read Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson's (2002) intriguing collection of resources, Rethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World, I anticipated writing a short and enthusiastic review in which I would recommend it unreservedly to the attention of anyone involved in social and environmental education. But when I put my hands to the keyboard, I realised that I wanted to say more about why critical appraisals of globalisation are so important at this moment in world history and, thus, why this book's significance lies as much in what it stands for as its actual contents.

Just how successful have we been in our roles as environmental educators? With the huge groundswell of interest our society has in the environmental field it is of interest to track the progress of five students that have moved on from our school. As potential movers and shapers in future years these students have been chosen to talk about their ideas, experiences and concerns about environmental education.

The background to Environmental Education at St. Joseph's College, Geelong, lies in the ever-changing curriculum of the school. During the early 1990s there was a major upheaval in choices. Chinese replaced French, Geography and English Literature disappeared and Environmental Studies was trialed as one of the new VCE subjects. Our Principal, Mr. Peter Cannon, was always receptive to new ideas.

All major assignments were location-based and presented some relevant local issues. Included were Coode Island, the chemical storage facility and its possible relocation, the scallop industry of Port Phillip Bay, the You Yangs and the Striped Legless Lizard.

Griffith University won the 2002 Allen Strom Eureka Prize for Environmental Education for its Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future Program, a unique resource designed to help the world's 60 million teachers bring about the changes needed for a sustainable future. Working with UNESCO, the Griffith team, led by AAEE Past President John Fien, created a comprehensive, free-of-charge, multimedia teacher education resource providing 100 hours of highly interactive professional development for use in pre- and in-service teacher education. Thousands of teachers across the world are using the program, which is available as a CD ROM and/or on the Internet, to plan learning experiences designed to empower students to develop and evaluate alternative visions of a sustainable future. For further information: www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/