There has been an understanding of a disconnected relation between humans and nature in modern liberalism. The disengaged relation is closely tied to dichotomous perceptions of realities with a widening gap between humans and nature, subject and object and culture and nature. This article considers the disconnected understanding as a sense-making crisis of modernity and qualifies this as a metacrisis. Instead of the disengaged views and the dichotomous relation between humans and nature, this article claims that the relations between the human self and nature is culturally, socially and politically mediated. To elaborate on these phenomena, this paper examines the writings of two thinkers with diverse concerns: Charles Taylor and Antonio Gramsci. For Taylor, the self is mediated with nature through social imaginaries, language and reconciliation in labour. For Gramsci, the self is mediated with the natural world via common sense, socio-historical elements and work. This article argues that cultural and socio-political elements that mediate human-nature relationships are essential in environmental education.

In Northern Finland, including sparsely populated Finnish Lapland and the small city of Rovaniemi, the widespread clearing of old trees has degraded the boreal environment. Disrupting the diverse relationships between people and trees, climate change will continue to alter the country’s northernmost forests, as is widely known. In this urgent context, we propose that the collaborative project Gifts from the Sentient Forest (GSF) has developed new modes of interacting with Northern Finland’s trees and appreciating their biocultural legacies. At the project’s core is arboreal sentience, a concept illuminating the capacities of trees to sense, communicate, behave, learn and remember. In the project, other-than-human sentience provides a basis for cultivating tree-human communication while expanding Lapland residents’ awareness of sylvan communities through painting, photography, film, music, poetry and performance. In this article, we present an account of three methods leveraged in the GSF programme to facilitate experiences of tree sentience in Northern Finland: sensing, interviewing (speaking) and remembering.

As usually conceived and practiced, education – sustainability, environmental and beyond – is embedded in an overarching narrative of progress: increasing human knowledge leading us to make wiser decisions about our behaviour, as individuals and societies. This article outlines an alternative story that draws on the work of two Indigenous scholars, E. Richard Atleo (Nuu-chah-nulth) and Leanne Simpson (Nishnaabeg), who approach living well as a quest to co-exist in harmony and balance with all our relations (that is, the living world of which we are an integral part). Among the core principles they identify are self-determination, consent and sacred respect, understood both as operative in the functioning of healthy ecosystems and as guides to human development and relationships. We show how these principles are grounded in a quest for the mutual beneficial flourishing of free beings and trace some of their implications for environmental education. While stories of this kind are at odds with the current dominant conception of schooling, there are many ways in which they could begin to influence how we move beyond the metacrisis and further, how wethink about and practice education for eco-social –cultural change and the future world/s to come.

This article examines teachers’ experiences in implementing a pedagogical model designed to promote ocean citizenship in primary education. Conducted during the 2021/2022 school year, the study involved 23 teachers from 10 Portuguese public schools who applied the model through citizen science and coastal monitoring activities. The results highlight the model’s effectiveness in fostering ocean citizenship by enhancing teachers’ pedagogical practices, strengthening interdisciplinary approaches, and raising environmental awareness among students. Teachers reported improved motivation, engagement, and critical thinking skills while addressing real-world marine conservation issues. However, the study also highlighted challenges such as transportation and resource constraints, difficulties in curriculum integration for 6th-grade students, and limited community activism initiatives. To address these challenges and enhance the model’s effectiveness, recommendations include reducing field trips, forming local partnerships, and adapting the model for different educational levels. Additionally, incorporating quantitative assessments in future research is recommended to evaluate broader impacts on teacher practices and student outcomes. The study underscores the model’s potential to embed ocean citizenship in school curricula, aligning with global initiatives like the Decade of Ocean Science and the 2030 Agenda, offering a scalable framework to advance ocean literacy worldwide.

This theoretical paper responds to concerns surrounding the fracturing and opaqueness of the term “sustainability” and the related metaphysical crisis that underpins an existential polycrisis. Drawing on Nietzsche’s work on order and disorder (1873, 1901), Latour’s (2013) philosophical anthropology of modernity and Rosa’s (2019) theory of resonance, the author proposes a way of considering sustainability pluralistically, as a crucial mode of existence amongst others. Revisiting the dualism of subject/object, the author proposes a more implicated, associative way of viewing how humans and non-humans relate, introducing the term sobject: interpolated, entangled being(s). As this mode of existence is explicated, the paper articulates how this could be useful in an educational sense. What is proposed is a way to “zone in” to sustainability with students; a mode through which we can learn to see our connections to and within the world, through which we can actively renew the many-pronged path of Earthly existence. Authentic transformation of dysfunctional existence on Earth, this paper argues, will not arise from harmony or consensus but from engaging the generative dissonances through which we might move beyond perpetual reconsideration of “sustainability” towards the active reconfiguration of how we live, learn and co-create a more inhabitable world.

The study explored physical education teacher educators’ (PETE educators) perspectives on integrating sustainable development (SD) imperatives within PETE courses. Nine PETE educators participated in a nine-month professional learning project featuring six workshops and seminars promoting reflection, peer discussion and dialogic encounters. The PETE educators designed pedagogical interventions based on their teaching practices, selecting teaching units where SD perspectives could be integrated. Data included intervention papers, audio-recorded sessions and logbooks, analysed descriptively and thematically. The proposed interventions focused on inclusion, equality and lifelong physical activity, and typically included lectures, seminars, student-centred teaching, reflections and assignments. Challenges included contextualising SD in PETE, framing SD goals, integrating SD content and addressing its normative nature. The study offers insights into the potential of integrating SD perspectives in PETE, highlights associated challenges, and calls for further research to bridge theory and practice.

As the planet confronts an interconnected meta-crisis linked to natural, political, social, and psychological challenges, there are some pedagogical tendencies that should be challenged within university education. Drawing on the philosophical literature of the Ecological University, this article uses an eco-philosophical framework for considering mainstream university pedagogy. We emphasise that the increasing mental health challenges of so many young people at university is both a symptom and a feature of the meta-crisis and a key consideration for how we might respond as university educators. We argue that many of the existing neoliberal and liberal tendencies in university can be interpreted as “Miserable Pedagogies” — which typically fail to engage with the meta-crisis as a threat to the planet’s psychological, social, political, or natural ecosystems. We suggest that our “pedagogies of misery” need to be disrupted and radically contested with an ecological world-view we describe as “Anthropocene Intelligence.” After setting out the key features of Anthropocene Intelligence, we consider how an alternative teaching approach, used by one of the authors, reflects such an ecological worldview and potentially provides a basis for more meaningful and active ways of being and learning on this finite planet.

Humanity is facing a confluence of existential environmental and material crises threatening socio-economic sustainability and the web of life that predicates human existence. At the same time, the erosion of spiritual, social, political and economic assemblages is undermining social cohesion, the fabric of democratic societies and humanity’s ability to change course. The dynamics in which humanity now finds itself has been termed the metacrisis, an embodiment of a mythical, all-consuming Moloch, emerging from collective akratic actions. Here, the consequences of the metacrisis for education are discussed from Rupert Read’s (2017) thrutopian perspective, which sidesteps the paralysis arising from dystopian laments and major-utopian fantasies. This paper argues for a thrutopian curriculum that enacts Read’s call for attention to the present and a focus on adaptation through resilience building, environmental care, positive relations and enjoyment of the possible. Such a curriculum confronts dystopian visions as no longer avoidable challenges while pulling utopian concepts from the permanent deferral inherent in major utopias down to minor-utopian realisations in the daily here-and-now of adaptive survival. The paper contends that thrutopian thinking can empower curriculum writing, teaching and environmental education and defuse the rise of debilitating crisis anxiety across the age spectrum.

Today, there is a tendency within the field of environmental education to argue that the current global metacrisis is intrinsically linked to idealist traditions in philosophy and culture. The underlying intuition appears to be that idealism ultimately relies on a Cartesian distinction between mind and body: that it privileges the mind while neglecting the body, thereby enabling a view of materiality – or “nature” – as something to be used or exploited. A similar assumption can be identified in the call for papers for this issue, where modern idealism is linked to neoliberal politics and economics. In contrast, the aim of our paper is not to reject idealism entirely but to argue that the real issue lies in particular ideas and worldviews associated with specific understandings of reality. To open up space for alternative ideas and imaginaries, we propose that educational theory and practice must engage with a process we term mundification: the initiation of individuals – though education and other cultural practices – into what it means for there to be something at all, that is; a world.

Teachers are at the front line of climate change education (CCE), working to integrate its complex environmental, social and ethical dimensions into their classroom practice. Yet little is known about the barriers to and enablers of implementing interdisciplinarity within CCE. This study investigates Finnish secondary school teachers’ perspectives on interdisciplinary CCE, examining how their practices are shaped by access to resources, training and institutional support. Drawing on the ecological model of teacher agency, we conduct a mixed-methods analysis from a national survey of 243 teachers. The findings reveal a strong commitment to locally relevant and ethically informed CCE, as well as an increased interest in activities in outdoor environments, research-based resources and drama-based resources. On the other hand, an increased disinclination to introducing new content and resources highlights the persistence of structural, epistemological, and ideological barriers. Teachers report relying heavily on self-directed learning and growing interdisciplinary fatigue due to fragmented support systems. These dynamics reveal a need for academic–school collaborations that move beyond top-down implementation and towards the creation of accessible, adaptable knowledge. This study contributes to emerging debates about how to foster critical interdisciplinarity in CCE by centring the voices and agency of educators.

Grey-headed flying-foxes, frequently-spotted residents of the greater Sydney region, Australia, play a key role in native ecosystems. Knowledge of local wildlife may increase interest in conserving and protecting wildlife. We assessed baseline knowledge in a year 3 class regarding common features and habits of grey-headed flying-foxes, and feasibility and impact of a classmate-peer-developed educational intervention. Pre- and post-intervention paper questionnaires were administered to a single class in a single school. The focussed educational intervention comprised an interactive presentation with slide-show, developed by a classmate-peer with stakeholder consultation. Simple descriptive and comparative statistical analyses were applied.

The same 29 students participated in both pre- and post-intervention questionnaires. The intervention proved feasible in a classroom setting. The pre-intervention survey indicated suboptimal knowledge regarding grey-headed flying-foxes in relation to categorisation, appearance, habitat, activity, diet and travel patterns. Post-intervention knowledge had generally improved.

This pilot study indicated that a simple peer-developed educational intervention was feasible and improved knowledge gaps, at least in the short term. Future research might assess the potential for initiatives like this to improve young people’s knowledge at a wider level, and explore the relationship between improvements in knowledge and efforts to conserve vulnerable species such as the grey-headed flying-fox.

This article critically examines the mediating role of teacher and student reflexivity in relation to promotional interest agents within the Global Action Programme on climate change. Regarding reflexivity, Margaret Archer’s basic idea seeks to mediate between agency and structure. Although social structures are considered limiting, it is believed that individuals can still practice personal reflexivity, leading to efforts to think and act critically in responding to climate change. Knowing the role and variations of environmental agent reflexivity in addressing climate change in Indonesian school is important. This study uses critical ethnography, which is intended to describe hidden realities. In a micro-sociological context, teacher’s interactions with students can be empowering and limiting. Both can interact dynamically, sometimes dominating, interdependent, connected and disconnected until connected again. This condition is influenced by the extent to which there is an opportunity for reflective monitoring through dialogue, discussion and deliberation. Referring to Archer’s typology of reflexivity, each environmental agent reflects four modes of internal conversation: communicative reflexivity, autonomous reflexivity, meta-reflexivity and fractured reflexivity. While Archer centres internal conversation in reflexive agency, this study foregrounds silent conversation in digital spaces as a critical bridge between reflection and environmental action in schools.

Socio-environmental challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss necessitate political action and transformative educational responses. Education for Environmental Citizenship (EEC) offers a promising framework for addressing these issues in school settings. However, there is a lack of reported structured teacher professional development (TPD) programmes that support EEC. This study presents a systematic literature review (SLR) of empirical studies and supranational frameworks, synthesising the results into a model for in-service TPD in EEC. The analysis identified core competencies such as critical thinking, systems thinking and global citizenship alongside with dimensions including socio-emotional and cultural-territorial competencies, which address context-specific educational needs. These are mapped to pedagogical strategies such as outdoor learning, reflective practice and community-based learning. The resulting model seeks to align global sustainability goals with local realities. This research lays the groundwork for fostering EEC by providing educators with the competencies and strategies essential to drive social and environmental change.

This article explores young children’s relations with soil, drawing on research that positioned soil as animate, lively and interconnected. The paper investigates how animist approaches offered a mode of encounter for children and their teachers, encouraging them to see themselves as part of a larger ecological community. The research began with a “soil biome immersion” experience where teachers engaged with soil through sensory and arts-based experiences. These initial encounters led to further exploration of child-soil relations through experiential learning and storytelling. Children, as active meaning-makers, co-constructed the inquiry through imaginative and sensory engagements. Findings suggest animism cultivates soil relations, challenging traditional notions of soil as inert and promoting a dynamic understanding of soil ecosystems. Through practices such as storying, drawing and listening, educators supported children’s animist perspectives, deepening their attunement to the more-than-human world. This article contributes to environmental education by demonstrating how animism can enrich children’s ecological awareness and their sense of connectedness to the world.

Despite its rich biodiversity, India faces severe environmental challenges due to human activities prioritising immediate gratification over long-term sustainability. Recognising the power of education to address environmental crises, Environmental Education (EE) emerged as a field of study to foster environmental consciousness. Hence, equipping teachers with the knowledge, skills and attitudes to effectively integrate environmental education into their pedagogy is crucial for cultivating sustainable behaviour in students. However, research indicated a significant gap in teacher preparedness to effectively address environmental issues, leaving them ill-equipped to implement related activities and tasks in their classrooms. Using qualitative content analysis, the EE-related courses were analysed to study their status, orientation and responsiveness within three pre-service teacher education programmes. The results of the study showed that most environment-related courses are not compulsory and largely have an anthropocentric orientation with a limited socio-scientific approach. The courses are required to be made responsive toward the contemporary issues and concerns related to Education for Sustainable Development.

This article explores how water conditions in geographical contexts could influence the construction of teachers’ professional identities and, consequently, their knowledge and beliefs about water sustainability. Water sustainability is defined as the responsible management of water from a perspective that integrates environmental, social and economic sustainability principles. This quantitative study employed an ad hoc questionnaire, inspired by the New Water Culture principles as a conceptual sustainability framework. The instrument, designed with Google Forms, was administered to 221 secondary school teachers from two cities with contrasting water and cultural conditions: Bogotá (Colombia) and Melilla (Spain). Results indicate that teachers’ knowledge and beliefs in both cities are not aligned with water sustainability principles, with no significant differences between the two groups due to their different water conditions. However, there are partial differences related to the respective personal experiences: in Bogotá, teachers show greater concern for water quality, whereas in Melilla the focus is more on the quantity available. These findings underline the importance of promoting teachers’ professional development in water sustainability aligned with professional identities, as a key strategy for nurturing aware and engaged citizens. This approach is fundamental to tackle water stress challenges and foster a paradigm shift towards more responsible, sustainable lifestyles globally.

Low-carbon behaviour is a crucial pathway to addressing current climate change and promoting sustainable economic and social development. The importance of environmental education has become a widely recognised consensus among higher education institutions. However, the mechanisms through which environmental education influences the low-carbon behaviour of the new generation of college students remain insufficiently explored. This study introduces environmental attitude and green perceived value as mediators, while prosocial behaviour is a moderator. A moderated chain mediation model is developed from new perspectives of psychological, social and environmental values, and this theoretical model is empirically tested using 759 college students in China surveyed by a questionnaire. The findings reveal that environmental education positively drives college students’ low-carbon behaviour, with environmental attitude and green perceived value playing a partial chain mediation role between environmental education and low-carbon behaviour. Additionally, prosocial behaviour positively moderates the relationships between environmental attitude, green perceived value and college students’ low-carbon behaviour, significantly moderating the mediating effect of green perceived value.