Education for sustainable development in a cultural ecological frame

Abstract

Cultural ecology takes a holistic and integrative view of the relationships between people and the environments they inhabit. In such a view, environment is seen not as a separate, ‘given’ entity, but rather something that emerges from a complex set of interactions and transactions between people, their material and organisational surroundings, their psychological and social relations, and their collective lifestyles, capabilities, beliefs, ideas and aspirations. Cultural ecological configurations recognise that human behaviour and environment co–construct each other in multifarious and complex ways. In this chapter I examine education for sustainable development from a cultural ecological perspective. This involves looking at tensions between continuity and change at the interplay between, on the one hand, the generalised organisational, managerial and legislative approaches that govern policies and practices in education and the environment generally and, on the other hand, the 'lived experiences' of individuals and communities, their improvisations and customary ways of engaging with the environment. Through inter- and multidisciplinary approaches and pedagogies of connection and difference, I explore some educational implications of addressing these tensions focusing on ways in which we might negotiate the boundaries that constrain ideas, and look for approaches that recognise diversity in human behaviour but at the same time seek commonalities that can form the basis of shared experiences and shared understandings.