REVIEWS
Rolf Jucker, Swiss Foundation for Environmental Education
This is a wonderful book and an admirable effort: it brings together some of the most eminent thinkers from a variety of relevant fields - and in the end you find all the jigsaw pieces which combined provide a pretty clear picture of where our sustainability journey ought to go.
James Pitt, University of York
The best book on sustainability for many years. This book comprises 33 well-written chapters by experts in the areas of education and sustainability. Superbly edited, the collection challenges most of the assumptions of the current educational establishment in a refreshing way. If we are to have a sustainable future we need to rethink what education is and how we set about it. The book is truly a handbook which will inform and inspire anyone who cares about learners and their future. As someone who runs a masters degree in education for sustainable development I make it mandatory reading for all my students.
Jo-Anne Ferreira in The Australian Journal of Environment Education.
Extract:
The book begins, thankfully not - like many texts - with a litany of environmental problems but with a focus on the underpinnings: an examination of the systems, structures and assumptions that enable the environmental crisis. These are not doom and gloom chapters, however. Rather they offer a way for us to re-think, challenge and actively oppose these normally unquestioned underpinnings. The remainder of the text has chapters that deal with new ways of thinking, valuing and doing. The book concludes with chapters dealing specifically with how educational systems and institutions will need to – and can – change to enable students to develop sustainability literacy. The range of skills and dispositions discussed in the text will all contribute in some way to developing sustainability literacy so the book as a whole offers a great way into thinking about, and enacting, sustainability...There are many things to like about this book, not least that the text focuses on the how, that is, on what we can do, and importantly, is written with a tone of hope. For these reasons, this book offers grounds for optimism and as well as concrete strategies for achieving sustainability.
Laurence Coupe in the Times Higher Education
Extract:
[The book reminds us] that the forces that are oppressing nature are simultaneously repressing our humanity. We are exhorted to "find meaning without consuming" (Paul Maiteny), to widen our aesthetics to include natural beauty as a "way of knowing" (Barry Bignell), and to discover new ways of "being-in-the-world" (John Danvers). This last initiative involves regarding the self as "open work", as process rather than as object. As such, it is continually emerging and merging with "the unfolding communal mind", itself inseparable from the whole "web of being". In that sense, we may say that the self makes sense only when it is viewed in the context of a human culture that is tied to a more-than-human nature...Although...to promote a way of life that is in touch with the Earth demands critical awareness...it has to be understood in a much wider and deeper sense. Sustainability Literacy helps us to do just that, and in doing so equips us to confront the unprecedented challenges to come.
Mary Loveday-Edwards, from the Higher Education Academy ADM Subject Centre
Extract:
The cohesion in the book may be at least partially explained or supported by the fact that the authors attended a series of workshops and symposia to encourage interaction and discussion before the book was compiled. This is one illustration of the level of deliberation and holism underlying each aspect of this book, which is exemplary. The fact that the book is both an information resource and a fund of practical ideas that, as it says, “can be applied to a wide range of educators, from parents to professors”, without trying to be rigid in its approach, shows an understanding of how learning is most effective...This book can function simultaneously as an introductory reader, as a sourcebook for further reading and research, as a kind of workbook or source of exercises for students, and as a structuring device when devising ways to teach sustainability. It is far-reaching and inclusive and will provide a multilayered resource which could be used in many different teaching and learning situations.
Holly Prall in the Journal of Environmental Education
Extract:
While the book instructs on such concerns as accelerating climate change feedback loops, it is
not primarily amessage of doom. As Karen Blincoe offers, we need carrots, not sticks; “the dream of a meaningful life and better future is what motivates most of us” (p. 205). The short articles are an easy and rewarding read, each offering information (some with sources clearly cited in the text) and activities to lead learners in. The whole book and the activities format emphasizes “learning as change,” rather than merely “learning about change” or “learning for change” (p.82). The book facilitates learners’ more connected, broader,more spiritual and experimental ways of being in the world and dealing with today’s complex problems.
Belinda Cooke in Innovations in Education and Teaching International
Extract:
The style is highly accessible and is suitable for tutors, students and other learners alike. As the
word ‘handbook’ in the main title suggests, the emphasis is on the development of the necessary skills and, to this end, each chapter includes activities and techniques that could be used to develop those relevant skills. Combined with the list of recommended resources, this is a comprehensive, concise, but comprehensible book. There is a much wider application than the title suggests. Indeed, there is ample justification for the editors’ conclusion that ‘a complex picture emerges of the skills attributes and dispositions necessary for life in the 21st century’ (p. 15).
