Can Education Save the World? A Response to David Gruenewald

Bibliographic Data

ID12010060
AuthorsAndrew Stables (0000-0002-6755-1806, University of Bath, corresponding author)
Year2004
Volume34
Issue2
Pages233-240
Publication date2004-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCurriculum Inquiry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0362-6784 • E-ISSN: 1467-873X
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-873x.2004.00289.x
OpenAlexW2079002479
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited15

Any commitment to education for sustainability assumes that teaching and learning can reduce or prevent damage to the biosphere. However, such an assumption remains deeply problematic. David Gruenewald’s is only one of several possible epistemological positions. This article discusses the variety of such positions, arguing for that which might variously be interpreted as either pragmatic, postfoundationalist, or poststructuralist, and concluding that we can only act in good faith as regards environmental sustainability, without certainty about what we are trying to conserve or how we might go about it. By contrast, Gruenewald has made unwarranted absolutist assumptions, both about the relationship of ecological and social issues and about Foucault

Biosphere · Certainty · Contrast (vision · Environmental education · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Faith · Pedagogy · Sociology · Sustainability · Variety (cybernetics · Computer Science · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics · Philosophy · Postmodernism in Literature and Education · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics · Ecology

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub