Many educational approaches to the ecological crisis posit fundamental causes that we can conceptually isolate and address. For instance, it is often claimed that a certain kind of manipulative or mechanistic way of thinking is responsible for the destruction underway. However, to say 'mechanistic' thinking caused the crisis itself risks thinking…

The main aim of this research is to present an evaluation tool for the Network of Schools for Sustainability in Catalonia, which comprises 18 networks with more than 1400 schools. The secondary aim is to reflect on the construction process conducted. The tool was constructed following the tenets of constructivist evaluation by Guba and Lincoln,…

The present study focuses on the impact of woodcraft-style family camping on preschool children, using their parents' perspectives. Although the history and methodology of Woodcraft have been well documented, the theme of family camping has attracted very little research attention, and even fewer studies have targeted the impact of this leisure…

Education for sustainable development (ESD) and higher education for sustainable development (HESD) are complex, multidisciplinary fields of enquiry, drawing on concepts and terms from different disciplines and languages. Although the fields are advancing in their acceptability within educational systems worldwide, they are currently struggling to…

Children's experiences of death are a potentially vital component of their developing sense of relatedness to non-human others and nature. Environmental education theory and practice would benefit from a broader understanding of how children view death and loss within ecological systems as well as within human-animal-nature relationships, but such…

In this paper, we reflect on a study in Brazil's Cerrado that attempts to address a lack of attention to an aesthetic dimension in environmental education practice and research. We start by tracing this lack to the overvaluing of the cognitive sphere in the educational process, noting its echo in the low aesthetic value attributed to the Cerrado…

This article explores the extent to which stories for young people encourage environmental engagement and a sense of agency. Our discussion is informed by the work of Paul Ricoeur (on hermeneutics and narrative), John Dewey (on primacy of experience) and John Macmurray (on personal agency in society). We understand fiction reading about place as…

Assesses selected examples of research on significant life experiences. Compares the ways in which these studies use retrospective accounts of experience with autobiographical approaches to curriculum inquiry that have been informed by phenomenology and hermeneutics. (Author/CCM)