Education Commons^™

The second strategy of the Australian government’s National Action Plan (NAP) for sustainability education is to reorient education systems to sustainability (Department of the Environment Water Heritage and the Arts [DEWHA], 2009). In this chapter, I put forward an activist-based socially critical viewpoint on the ambition to reorient education whilst uncovering a range of ambiguities, tensions and constraints which hinder meaningful change. I suggest that attention to these predicaments across curriculum, policy and accountability mechanisms will offer possibilities and hope. In this introductory section, I begin with the sustainability education NAP and provide a socio-ecological context before sketching out the …