Sustainable development and social learning: Re-contextualising the space of orientation

In the lead-up to the 2007 Australian federal election, Labor candidate Kevin Rudd described climate change as the “great moral challenge of our generation”. In the years since then, the heat in Australia has been rising – in terms of both temperature and climate politics –, but government action has slowed down. Endorsement of economic growth is prioritised, with only intermittent recognition of environmental costs. At grassroots level, citizens’ attitudes are influenced by social norms. This kind of social learning is a major constraint on sustainability. Therefore, it seems useful to consider how educators might help build sustainable futures. To understand how historical context entangles social learning in ways that complicate policies associated with Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and practices of Education for Sustainability (EfS), the author of this paper draws on the concept of “space of orientation”. Focusing on adult education, she traces the contradiction between “globalisation” and “sustainability” through policy logics, relational practices in Australian adult education and the “necessary utopia” which provides a point of reference for making futures. She argues that spaces of orientation are a critical resource in this era of intensifying conflicts of interest between economic priorities of globalisation and environmental priorities intended to slow global warming, because they mediate context and orient learning in ways that clear a path towards sustainability through the entangled histories of this present

Re-making education in contexts of uncertainty: governing, learning and contextual understanding

The euphemism ‘21st century contexts’ is often used to capture the transition from solid twentieth century education towards more uncertain social and educational conditions. These contextual narratives acknowledge the complexities of contemporary education that make decision-making, professional practice and leadership seem difficult. But they rarely explain the context of uncertainty, which, as research suggests, is linked to rapid change in practices of governing and their effects on nation states, the inter-state order, and established national educational knowledge-authority orders. This disjuncture raises questions about how, and with what effects, contexts shape educators ways of knowing and doing education. I use the concept of ‘educational space–time’ to understand how educators contextual understandings are implicated in educational change by drawing examples from studies of educational change in different historical periods and governing regimes. I argue that the way educators navigate change and uncertainty has effects on learning and citizenship but should also acknowledge the effects of changes in governing regimes. Contextual understandings that acknowledge shifts in governing–learning regimes can open the way to educational work that is not locked into binary choices between territorial government or multilateral governance