New Publications

  • Report from the bottom line: the UK National Ecosystem Assessment

    I woke up today to discover that this significant publication has emerged.   As the Independent puts it: A view of green space from your bedroom window?  That's worth £300 to you each year.  The total value of British woodland...

  • UNECE's Miracle Birth

    I have written before about what I see as the ineffectiveness of UNECE's work on ESD, so I approach its latest outpourings with my normal skepticism.  After much gestation, it has at last given birth to its Competences in ESD...

  • The Wrong Values

    In the aftermath of the 1953 uprising in East Germany, which arose because of the population’s failure to appreciate government efforts to build a socialist paradise for them, Bertolt Brecht wrote the following in Die Lösung: After the uprising of...

  • Sustaining our Future – maybe

    The Learning & Skills Improvement Service has just published a new draft of its paper: Sustaining our Future: a framework for moving towards a sustainable learning and skills sector This begins: The learning and skills sector is increasingly aware of...

  • The Web of Hope

    I've written two blogs now for the Web of Hope.   The latest, about to appear, is about teaching –  the idea that we are all teachers now whether we like, or know, it or not.  We teach through our...

  • An Expert Review Disowned

    Hot on the heels of UNESCO's UK funding problems comes a report from UNESCO in Paris: Education for Sustainable Development: an expert review of processes and learning Its Preface says: "... UNESCO has commissioned this expert review on processes and learning...

  • Sustainable Energy – without the hot air

    This 383 page book by David JC MacKay is dedicated to "those who will not have the benefits of two billion years' accumulated energy reserves"; that is, to all those who, unwittingly, will follow us onto the Earth – the...

  • Should we promote behaviour change or encourage thinking?

    Suitably ironically, of course, this is not quite the no-brainer that it might seem, or so I argue in my latest article which was commissioned by compassionate folk at the Web of Hope taking pity on a jobbing ex-professor.   Should...

  • A Council of Despair

    I am reading a paper from the 3046th (sic) Council of Europe meeting on Education, Youth, Culture and Sport which sets out the Council's yawningly predictable "conclusions" on ESD.   The report "highlights the key role of education as a...

  • What's Allowed to Count as Citizenship Education?

    The DfE's School Research News reports today on two school citizenship reports.  The first is  Citizenship Education in England 2001-2010: young people’s practices and prospects for the future: the eighth and final report from the Citizenship Education Longitudinal Study. The other is...