Social Ecology and Education Transforming Worldviews and Practices

Social Ecology and Education addresses "ecological understanding" as a transformative educational issue: a learning response to emerging insights into social-ecological relationships and the future of life on our planet.

In the face of the existential threats posed by climate change, loss of biodiversity, pandemids and the associated ecological and social challenges; there is a need to extend our responses beyond scientific inquiry and technological initiatives. This book seeks to move the dialogue towards a deeper and broader understanding of the complexities of the issues involved. To achieve this, the book discusses issues rarely addressed through programs in "Education for Sustainability" and "Environmental Education," such as student defined knowledge systems, deep engagement with the implications of indigenous understandings, climate change as symptomatic of broad epistemological problems, social disengagement and differentiated barriers to meaningful change. This work is enriched by its focus on the learning and the learning systems that have led to our current predicament.

This book seeks to initiate considerations of this kind, to invigorate education for sustainable, equitable, healthy and meaningful futures. As such, this book will be of great interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students in a range of education and environmental courses.

Part 1: Transforming Learning 1. (Edge)ucation by Design 2. Teaching Social Ecology 3. Transformative Learning Priorities 4. What was Education for? Learning in the Shadow of Climate Change 5. Wild Pedagogies and the Promise of a Different Education: Challenges to Change; Part 2: Transforming Practice 6.Community Education and Partnerships for Sustainable Development: A Way Forward for Indigenous Asia 7. Leadership of the Future, for the Future: An Insight into a Unique Transformative Learning Program for Sustainability Capability 8. The Gift of Presence in Groups: An Unfolding Story of Transformative Learning 9. Art, Imagination and the Environmental Movement; Part 3: Learning Nature–Culture 10. Being Effective: Social Ecological Understanding in Action 11. Transformative Learning Through Maori Migration to Australia 12. Passionate Immersions in Nature: Cultures of the Everyday 13. Please Explain! 14. Have You Ever Found a Gawuraa? 15. Sustainability Work: An Urgent Need for a New Profession

David Wright is a senior lecturer in Education at Western Sydney University, Australia.

Stuart B. Hill is Foundation Chair of Social Ecology at Western Sydney University, Australia.