December 2011

  • Global warming may be irreversible by 2006

    This is not an example of my rather tardy New Year predictions, but the title of a recent article in the Onion – and thanks to Alan Reid for pointing it out as I've not been keeping up with the...

  • 0.679

    0.679 (don’t you just love this precision) is Environmental Education Research’s impact factor in the education & educational research category of the Social Science Citation index which gives it a ranking of 88/184 – not bad for a new-comer, and...

  • Double science

    I watched both Brian Cox and Bruce Hood on BBC 4 last night, with the promise of the best double science lesson for many years, if not ever.   As usual in these programmes, Cox flew round the world to...

  • ESD is ...

    Just what, exactly?  Well, I read a comment recently that ... ESD is education that addresses the inter-relatedness of social justice, ecological integrity and economics Oh, how I wish it did, but the sort of ESD that I usually come across...

  • New kid on the blog

    Terrible pun, but a very warm welcome, anyway, to Arjen Wals's new blog: Transformative Learning.  Arjen writes: Ultimately, sustainability needs to emerge in the everyday fabric of life – in the minds of people and in the values they live by....

  • Last snowdrops of the year

    These should more properly be the first snowdrops of 2012, I suppose, but given that they are in bloom at the University in December, that seems premature – or precocious, maybe – possibly like the snowdrops themselves.  Some will cite...

  • Plan A: the learning store

    I'm grateful to Nick Jones for the news that M&S has opened its first international sustainable learning store.  Sadly, this is in India, so I'll not be popping along any time soon, but I would were it a bit nearer...

  • Before the big bang

    I watched an engaging BBC4 Horizon programme last night which mostly involved theoretical cosmologists putting forward their own ideas and a few arcane diagrams, and being just ever so slightly, but fairly nicely, dismissive of those of others.  Not all...

  • Transformative learning – or is it transformative teaching?

    In a discussion paper for the HEA, ESD and Inter-disciplinarity: focus and trajectories, written in preparation for yesterday's seminar: Inter-disciplinary Sustainability Education: Insights, Momentum and Futures, Alex Ryan writes: Following the work of Mezirow and developments by other educationalists, transformative learning processes generate...

  • The road out of Durban

    I posted recently on Saudi attempts to get hold of some of the green cash that's to be given to countries that are adversely affected by the world's carbon-reduction efforts.  This, in the House of Saud's case, is to compensate...