Colleagues - you are most welcome to join us at this ongoing seminar  
series at the University of Bath. The seminars are free and open to  
everyone interested in exploring the role of learning within  
sustainable development. Please feel free to pass details on to all  
who might be interested.
For more details about the seminars or the research centre please  
contact us at [log in to unmask] A city/campus map is available, as is  
information about travelling to the University.  See: http:// 
www.bath.ac.uk/cree/events



Learning and Sustainable Development - seminar series

The seminars will continue to explore issues concerned with learning  
and sustainable development, drawing on international, national and  
local research & development activities. The seminars will provide  
opportunities for practitioners, researchers and policy makers to  
interact, with the aim of stimulating greater understanding of  
learning's roles in sustainable development, and developing research  
agenda and collaborations.



Education for Sustainability (EfS) in Australia:
reviewing the state of play

Annette Gough (RMIT University) and Noel Gough (University of Canberra)

Monday, September 19th, 10.15 to 12.15
Room 1W 3.15, Department of Education

Environmental education has a long history as a movement within  
formal education in Australia, covering three and a half decades. In  
recent times there have been some shifts towards using the term  
Education for Sustainability (EfS) as, for example, in New Zealand  
and elsewhere, even though the UN Decade (2005-14) has the title,  
Education for Sustainable Development. The present time sees a number  
of initiatives:

- there is a strong Sustainable Schools initiative now going national  
across Australia after starting in Victoria and New South Wales
- the national Ministerial Council for Employment, Education,  
Training and Youth Affairs is about to release a National Statement  
on Environmental Education for Schools
- there are discussions around Universities for a Sustainable Future,  
and
- a Sustainability Education Roundtable across formal, informal and  
nonformal education sectors is gathering momentum.
The seminar will examine whether, in the formal curriculum of  
schools, a change towards EfS is happening, or whether it is going to  
be plus ça change.



Does Nature Matter?

Michael Bonnett (Cambridge University)

Wednesday, 28th September, 10.15 to 12.15
Room 1WN 3.8, Department of Education

Much official environmental education policy makes scant reference to  
nature and the issue of our underlying attitude towards it. It is  
preoccupied with the issue of meeting 'sustainably' what are taken to  
be present and future human needs. In many ways nature has become  
invisible and when it is glimpsed, it is often through implicit veils  
of instrumentalism, anthropocentrism, anthropomorphism and  
sentimentalism.

Michael Bonnett will be inviting discussion of a range of  
philosophical questions posed by this situation and will explore the  
view that environmental education - indeed any education - worthy of  
the name needs to bring a range of searching questions concerning  
nature to the attention of learners, and to encourage them to develop  
their own on-going responses to them. Questions such as:

- What is nature and what is our place in it?

- How can we know nature and what should be our attitude towards it?

- Does the human species deserve to survive?

Our present environmental predicament not only provides an exciting  
opportunity to re-focus education on such important ways of  
articulating and developing our understanding of the human situation,  
but (it will be argued) positively requires the exploration of such  
questions for its long term resolution. The currently dominant and  
purely pragmatic adoption of the canon of enlightened self-interest  
in addressing environmental problems - an approach that would suggest  
that pursuing such questions is largely unnecessary or indeed,  
counter-productive - will itself be questioned.

'Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality' (Iris  
Murdoch). Some implications of this view for understanding nature and  
our environmental predicament will be explored.




'Argentina calling' - developing community education programmes in  
Northern Argentina

Gail Bromley (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)

Wednesday, 12th October, 10.15 to 12.15
Room 1WN 3.8, Department of Education

This seminar will explore how Kew has been working alongside a key  
Argentinian NGO and the local community to support environmental  
education and conservation priorities in Argentina. Part of the work  
has been achieved by establishing an environmental education teacher  
training package in rural communities through radio broadcasts; this  
coursework has been rolled out to over 10,000 teachers and is planned  
to reach 40,000 more. Other projects include the establishment of 4  
'biodiversity interpretation centres' in key localities to facilitate  
understanding about, and action in support of, local biodiversity  
conservation and sustainable development. The major biodiversity  
issues for northern Argentina will be discussed, alongside ideas  
currently being developed to address these.