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.
reflective, so that they may generate beliefs and opinions that will prove more true
and justified to guide action.’ (Mezirow 2000: 7-8)
Ideas about the potentially transformative nature of learning are also central to work which
explores teaching and learning about environmental and development issues, for example in
the well-respected writings of Freire (1972, 1976) and Huckle and Sterling (1996). This
significant body of work has examined the potential for methods and approaches to
education and learning which expand the learner’s understanding of him/ herself and of the
world around him/ her, and potentially lead to individual or social change. While more work is
needed to understand these complex processes more fully (cf. Rickinson 2001, Heimlich and
Ardoin 2008), a number of researchers have already argued that learning which inculcates
skills such as critical thinking and problem solving is key to addressing climate change and
sustainable development, and to living in a rapidly changing world more generally (cf. Gough
and Scott 2007, Bourn 2008b).
At the root of much of this discussion is a fundamental question about the aims of education
in development generally, and of educational responses to climate/ environmental change in
particular:
„Some argue that the ultimate purpose of education is to affect individuals’ behaviors
and that conservation education, among other areas, specifically calls for behavioral
change. Others contend that the primary role of education is to facilitate an
individual’s intellectual capability and not to impose on individuals how they should
live. To that end, environmental education represents a process for intellectual
growth using environment as the context.’ (Heimlich and Ardoin 2008: 215)
In other words, in the context of climate change, is the aim of educational programmes to
teach people (of all ages) to perform certain „appropriate’ or „correct’ behaviours (e.g.
conserving energy, recycling, reducing carbon consumption) or is it to support them to
develop the capacities to address rapid change and uncertainty?
There are, of course, researchers with views that could be placed along the whole spectrum
between these two disparate orientations (see Courtenay-Hall and Rogers 2002, Kollmuss
and Agyeman 2002). However, a significant body of research in the field - as well as within
educational research more generally - strongly critiques the notion of behaviour change as
the key aim of education:
„Once we locate “behaviour change” at the top of the educational agenda, it is all too
easy for schooling to slip from education to indoctrination. It is also all too easy for
students to catch on quickly, and to develop the attitude of giving their teachers what
they seem to want to hear. In the process, what students can end up learning most
about is living inauthentically, or engaging in cynical behaviour, or yet another reason
to consider dropping out of school. Promoting “pro-environmental behaviour” is thus
not a salutory focus for the design of environmental education programs, the
assessment of environmental learning, the prediction of future capacity of students to
engage in “responsible environmental behaviour”, and the evaluation of
environmental education programs.’ (Courtenay-Hall and Rogers 2002: 285)5
This discussion includes not only educational efforts in schools, but also in other educational
arenas, including higher education:
5 See also Robottom and Hart (1993), Courtenay-Hall (1997) and Jickling and Spork (1998).