Citation: Bangay, C. and Blum, N. (2010) Education Responses to Climate Change and Quality: Two
Parts of the Same Agenda? International Journal of Educational Development 30(4): 335-450.
Recent research on access to primary education, however, highlights that simple provision
of basic facilities and increased enrolment does not in itself ensure positive educational
impacts. Rather, access must be meaningful - in other words, characterised by high
attendance rates, progression through grades with little or no repetition, and learning
outcomes which confirm that basic skills are being mastered (Lewin 2007). Furthermore,
education provision is likely to be more meaningful, and participation in learning processes
more active, when programmes deliver knowledge and skills which are relevant to local
contexts and needs.
This understanding is in sharp contrast to the tendency for international education and
development agendas to focus rather narrowly on certain issues - for instance specific types
of knowledge and skills (e.g. literacy, numeracy, vocational skills) or educational arenas (e.g.
basic/ primary education). While sustained and detailed engagement with these issues is
clearly important, too limited a focus tends to lead to „silo’ education efforts which chip away
at single, albeit key issues (e.g. contemporary work on gender equality and fragile states)
without more fully integrating them into broader approaches to education and development.
It also often results in quite limited approaches to addressing the complex links between
provision, access, learning and development (see, for example, King, McGrath and Rose
2007).
Research on environmental teaching and learning is one of these important issues which
has remained on the margins of research and policy on education and international
development. In many cases, it is seen as an „alternative education’ which has little value to
mainstream educational development goals, and is therefore widely addressed through the
„add-on’ of environmental topics in curricula and training programmes. A recent European
Commission publication, for instance, advocates the addition of awareness-raising in
schools, new topics for vocational training, and the creation of professional experts through
post-graduate training programmes as appropriate sector strategies for addressing climate
change (European Commission 2009). Similarly, while there is significant discussion by
international aid donors of the need for „capacity building’ and „knowledge transfer’ in both
developed and developing countries in order to address climate change, the connections to
education, learning and development as a whole are very poorly articulated (cf. World Bank
2008, USAID 2007).
While such early efforts are undoubtedly an important part of addressing climate change,
their promotion appears to be rooted in somewhat oversimplified understandings of the
relationships between education, learning and change. Simply put, it is often assumed that
new inputs (e.g. curricula, textbooks, training programmes) will result in significant individual
and systemic change. While addressing climate change undoubtedly requires new
knowledge and skills (see section 6.2), several decades of educational research have also
illustrated the complexity of learning processes, and have roundly critiqued „transmission’
theories which suggest that learning is the simple transfer of information from teacher to
student (see Illeris 2007: 30-50). Rather, learning is better understood as a complex process
of acquisition, accommodation, interpretation and capacity change, and which is influenced
by a number of individual and social factors. The work of key theorists such as Vygotsky and
Piaget, for instance, continues to influence educational research on the complex nature of
learning and its connections to curriculum development and assessment systems. This
influential body of writing on learning is also the foundation for further expanded
understandings of the links between learning and individual or social change - often labelled
as „transformative’:
„Transformative learning refers to the process by which we transform our taken-for-
granted frames of reference (meaning perspectives, habits of mind, mind-sets), to
make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, emotionally capable of change, and