John Huckle

Independent academic (formerly principal lecturer in education, De Montfort University Bedford.

The new Curriculum for Wales seeks to develop young people who are ethical, informed citizens of Wales and the world and committed to the sustainability of the planet. While the curriculum requires the integration of subject knowledge, the associated guidance fails to suggest a philosophy of knowledge to inform such integration. Having linked susta...

Critical School Geography explores how school geography guided by critical social theory can address the UN’s sustainable development goals. It draws on critical geography and education to explain that radical democracy is the key to constructing nature, space and place in more sustainable ways and to argue for a re-orientation of the school subjec...

This is a sample chapter from an ebook that I am currently writing. Other chapters and related curriculum units can be found on the author's website.

Geographical knowledge is powerful if it is critical and empowering. This article develops this argument with reference to the philosophy of knowledge and Laura Wheelahan's advocacy of critical realism as the philosophical strand of her social realist curriculum theory. While the GeoCapabilities Project has drawn on the sociological strand of that...

The Global Learning Programme in England employs a new form of networked governance to deliver education for sustainable development in schools. This article focuses on Biccum's claim that such programmes serve to sustain the prevailing neo-liberal hegemony by further marginalizing critical voices such as those drawing on Marxist and post-structura...

What is involved in encouraging learners to think critically about the state of the world? And what may be required to make it more just and sustainable? This article answers these questions by focusing on global political economy, governance and citizenship. It draws on critical theories relating to network society, global deliberative democracy,...

An analysis of the literature supporting the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development and a sample of its key products suggests that it failed to acknowledge or challenge neoliberalism as a hegemonic force blocking transitions towards genuine sustainability. The authors argue that the rationale for the Decade was idealistic and that globa...

Education for Sustainability: Assessing Pathways to the Future - Volume 30 Issue 1 - John Huckle

There has been very limited progress along the pathways to sustainability sketched in my 1991 article. Some would argue we have taken several steps backwards. Environmental education is now more prepared to acknowledge the role of neoliberal global capitalism in promoting unsustainable development, and to associate sustainability with social moveme...

Eco-Schools, run by the charity Keep Britain Tidy and sponsored by the corporations ASDAN, EDF Energy, HSBC, and Homebase, are now the major vehicle for education for sustainable development in English schools. This article examines the ways in which corporations shape policy on sustainable development and education and goes on to suggest that corp...

How should teacher education for sustainability (TEfS) respond to new information and communication technologies that can enable new forms of social and environmental relations and new forms of pedagogy? To answer that question, this article will consider the potential of Web 2.0 technologies or social media to enrich the content and pedagogy of ed...

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation offers a new approach to education for sustainable development based on the text Sense and Sustainability. This review essay argues that despite welcome elements, its neglect of economic and political realities means that it promotes technological utopianism and idealism. Revisions are suggested that would render the...

Introducing the spring 2011 issue of Teaching Geography (vol 36, issue 1) with its focus on sustainability, the editor reminds readers of extreme weather events in 2010 which provided stark reminders of the power of nature; identifies the relationships between nature, society and geographical education as the theme of the issue; and introduces arti...

At a time when the global capitalist economy is in crisis the Bonn Declaration on ESD can be seen to ignore economic and political realities. This article argues for a more critical ESD linked to global citizenship education. It makes that argument by reference to the limitations of green new deals being carried out as part of fiscal stimulus packa...

The Government has announced that all schools are to become sustainable schools by 2020. This article suggests that if geography teachers are to realise the full potential of such schools, they should enable students to think critically about sustainable development and make informed choices about realising sustainability within schools and the wid...

In 2006 the author was contracted to research possible approaches to a UK indicator of education for sustainable development (ESD). This article describes and seeks to explain the response of government advisers and influential members of the UK ESD community to the approaches he proposed. While the UK strategy for sustainable development called fo...

This article links the prospects of sustainable development to democratic socialism and those forms of knowledge and learning developed by the global anti‐capitalist movement. While socially critical approaches to education for sustainable development (ESD) can accommodate these forms, they are marginalised by New Labour’s policies on sustainable d...

Résumé / Abstract / Resumen /Resum La généralisation des problbmes,écologiques a l'échelle planétaire a

Dialectics and critical realism do then offer a philosophy that transcends the limits of mainstream, Marxist and postmodern environmentalisms, acknowledges their achievements, and allows the construction of a new grand narrative of sustainability that both relegitimates and radicalises modernity (Gare, 1995; Jencks 1996; Myerson, 2001). This is a n...

At a time when the national curriculum for schools in England gives geography the major responsibility for education for sustainable development, this article introduces teachers to the philosophical foundations and key concepts of political ecology. It suggests that these can reform and strengthen geographical education for sustainable development...

Incl. notes on the contributors, bibliographical references, index

This article is a shortened version of one prepared as background to a presentation which the author was invited to give at the International Conference on Environmental Education held in Guangzhou in December 1994. It uses video extracts about environment and development issues in China to explore how television can best be used with interactive t...

Introduction Perhaps the [19921 Earth Summit marks a twenty year cycle, and we have 'arrived where we started'. We know this place, and these crises are familiar, but the feeling is not one of deja vu. Things have changed, and these changes call for redoubled learning and exploration of new ethical, political, economic and educational paradigms. We...

It is easy to describe the mess the world is in, and to preach large changes of heart. Short, saleable books which do that may be useful if they persuade people in good directions, but only if people know how to move in those directions. (Hugh Stretton, 1976, p. 2) In June 1992, the UN Conference on Environment and Development will be held in Braz...

The African crisis and Band Aid stimulated school students to a higher degree of awareness. That crisis needs to be set in the context of the world economy and the world political order. In the classroom, eight principles involving an awareness of environment, history, class conflict, political literacy, political implications of personal lifestyle...

Identification of major themes in a growing, global ecological crisis also sees capitalism as inherently responsible for creating and maintaining the crisis. A radical, four-component curriculum, developing political literacy through reflection and action on environmental issues, is urged as one means of making students more potent as agents of soc...

Why is so much schooling profoundly anti-educational? Why do so few geography lessons develop a sensitivity to place and landscape and a critical awareness of one's location within economic and social structures which inevitably limit freedom? What are the alternatives and which are likely to be realized in the future? Attempts to answer such quest...

The workshop was designed to help geography teachers explore possible ways of handling the controversial issues of nuclear power in the classroom.-after Author

Demolition sites, neglected Victorian buildings, high-rise flats, and monotonous modern housing reflect the all-pervasive trend to placelessness. Young people deserve better, and architects, planners, developers, and politicians can do better. Humanistic geographical education could be a force for change if the teachers who take the special message...

Expresses disenchantment with the strong positivism of the past decade but concentrates on some of the psychological, sociological and pedagogical aspects of such a view. Argues for more attention to be given to educating pupils in the affective domain. It is not enough merely to express a concern about values, geographers were doing that years ago...

Examines some of the implications of a wider recognition of the ethical basis of environmental education, and suggests that there is much in the literature to help clarify the issues raised. The publications listed are a personal selection, and the opportunities for reader participation are designed to aid reflection upon personal values, attitudes...

A commitment to values education on the part of geography teachers necessitates their examination of educational, environmental, and geographical ideologies if the curriculum is to become an effective vehicle for environmental education. Environmental philosophy suggests that teachers should extend their pupils' values awareness and teach certain f...

The geography curriculum in higher education is a reflection of values held by the geographical and educational communities, and by society at large. In addition to fostering an awareness of such values, the teacher should seek to transmit an environmental ethic by adopting relevant approaches from moral and political education. These would provide...

The recent debate on relevance and social responsibility in geography has directed our attention to the nature and limitations of empirical knowledge, and the ethical foundations which underlie our various professional roles. Instability within human ecosystems is the result of a deficient world view which has caused knowledge to become detached fr...