Can Sustainability Become a Burning River? An Ecopedagogic Agenda for the Discipline
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55845/jos-2025-1117Keywords:
Ecopedagogy, Sustainability Education, Transformative Pedagogy, Eco-social Transformation, Critical Sustainability, PraxisAbstract
Sustainability is everywhere. Spearheaded by the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals, it is woven into supranational policies and embedded in national strategies. It is used by activists, researchers and businesses. In this essay, I suggest that such ever-growing ubiquity has weakened its transformational impact in overt and covert ways. I propose a way forward through education. I connect with scholarship on ecopedagogy as a socially inclusive and eco-centric approach to teaching and learning about sustainability. I suggest that ecopedagogy offers a way of moving beyond the neoliberal logic of sustainability education as a vehicle for labour market skill acquisition and towards social-environmental consciousness. I conclude by urging fellow educators to adopt ecopedagogy in their practice and turn sustainability into a ‘burning river’ of change.
References
Bowers, C.A. (2001). Educating for Eco-Justice and Community. University of Georgia Press.
Busch, T., Barnett, M. L., Burritt, R. L., Cashore, B. W., Freeman, R. E., Henriques, I., ... & York, J. (2024). Moving beyond “the” business case: How to make corporate sustainability work. Business Strategy and the Environment, 33(2), 776-787.
Cabezas, H., & Diwekar, U. (2012). Sustainability: Multi-disciplinary perspectives. Bentham Science Publishers.
Cherrington, R., Manolchev, C., Alexander, A., & Fishburn, J. (2023). Learning through games: Facilitating meaning-making in online exchanges. Management Learning, 55(4), 596-616. https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076231183216
de Freitas Netto, S. V., Sobral, M. F. F., Ribeiro, A. R. B., & Soares, G. R. D. L. (2020). Concepts and forms of greenwashing: A systematic review. Environmental Sciences Europe, 32, 1-12.
Feeney, M., Grohnert, T., Gijselaers, W., & Martens, P. (2023). Organizations, learning, and sustainability: A cross-disciplinary review and research agenda. Journal of Business Ethics, 184(1), 217-235.
Freire, P. (1996). Pedagogy of the oppressed (revised). New York: Continuum, 356, 357-358.
Gaard, G. (2009) Children's environmental literature: From ecocriticism to ecopedagogy. Neohelicon;36(2):321-334. https://uoelibrary.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/childrens-environmental-literature-ecocriticism/docview/200647489/se-2. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-009-0003-7.
Gruenewald, D. A. (2003). The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical Pedagogy of Place. Educational Researcher, 32(4), 3–12. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X032004003
Hartley, K., Baldassarre, B., & Kirchherr, J. (2024). Circular economy as crisis response: A primer. Journal of Cleaner Production, 434, 140140.
Heikkila, T., & Gerlak, A. K. (2019). Working on learning: How the institutional rules of environmental governance matter. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 62(1), 106–123.
Hereu‐Morales, J., Segarra, A., & Valderrama, C. (2024). The European (Green?) Deal: A systematic analysis of environmental sustainability. Sustainable Development, 32(1), 647-661.
Indellicato, R. (2021). Bioethics and ecopedagogy. Journal of Modern Science, 47(2), 153-172.
Kahn, R. (2010). Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, and Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement. Peter Lang Publishing.
Kirchherr, J. Bullshit in the Sustainability and Transitions Literature: a Provocation. Circ.Econ.Sust. 3, 167–172 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43615-022-00175-9
Kopnina, H. (2020). Education for the future? Critical evaluation of education for sustainable development goals. Environmental Education Research, 26(3), 280–291. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2020.1703064.
Kopnina, H. (2019b). Green-washing or best case practice? Using a circular economy and Cradle to Cradle case studies in educational practice. Journal of Cleaner Production, 219, 613–623. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.02.005
Kopnina, H. (2014). Education for sustainable development (ESD) as if environment really mattered. Environmental Development, 12, 37–46. doi:10.1016/j.envdev.2014.09.001
Manolchev, C., Alexander, A., & Cherrington, R. (2022). Towards 'employability 3.0': From practice to praxis. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, (24). https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi24.874
Manolchev, C., Watson, D., Colombo, L. Elf., P & Vandeventer, J.S. (2024). A Means to an End? The Role of Technology in Growth and Post-growth Futures of Agrifood Work in a European Context. In The Handbook for the Future of Work (pp. 411-418). Routledge.
Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., & Behrens, W. W.III. (1972). The limits to growth. New York, NY: Universe Books.
Misiaszek, G. W. (2015). Ecopedagogy and citizenship in the age of globalisation: Connections between environmental and global citizenship education to save the planet. European Journal of Education, 50(3), 280–292. doi:10.1111/ejed.12138
Misiaszek, G.W. (2022). Ecopedagogy: Critical Environmental Pedagogies to Disrupt Falsely Touted Sustainable Development. In: Abdi, A.A., Misiaszek, G.W. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook on Critical Theories of Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86343-2_17
Pettigrew, A., & Starkey, K. (2016). From the guest editors: The legitimacy and impact of business schools–Key issues and a research agenda. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 15, 649–664.
Servant-Miklos, G. (2024). Pedagogies of collapse: A hopeful education for the end of the world as we know it. Bloomsbury Academic.
Saeverot, H., & Torgersen, G. E. (2024). Educational Theory of the Unforeseen. Bloomsbury.
Shrivastava, P. (1994). Greening business education: Toward an ecocentric pedagogy. Journal of Management Inquiry, 3(3), 235–243. doi:10.1177/105649269433003
Stahel, W. R. (2019). The circular economy: A user's guide. Routledge.
Valenzuela, F., & Böhm, S. (2017). Against wasted politics: A critique of the circular economy. Ephemera: theory & politics in organization, 17(1), 23-60.
Wyatt, M. (2014). Academics' conceptions of teaching sustainability. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 30(2), 278-279.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Journal of Sustainability

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.