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Tomorrow's Leaders and Today's Agents of Change? Children, Sustainability Education and Environmental Governance
Author(s) -
Walker Catherine
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
children and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.538
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1099-0860
pISSN - 0951-0605
DOI - 10.1111/chso.12192
Subject(s) - sustainability , agency (philosophy) , corporate governance , sustainability organizations , rhetoric , work (physics) , environmental education , sustainable development , sustainability science , public relations , political science , sociology , environmental resource management , business , pedagogy , social science , engineering , economics , ecology , law , biology , mechanical engineering , linguistics , philosophy , finance
Children are central to the rhetoric supporting global climate agreements, yet they are also envisaged to play a strategic role in materialising such agreements. Along with other household actors, children are implicated in localised efforts to manage global resource sustainability. As learners in educational systems that are being redesigned to encompass messages of sustainability, children are moreover positioned as ‘agents of change’ through sustainability education. Drawing on theoretical work on children's agency and interdependence, this review calls for greater attention to the structural and relational dimensions of environmental knowledge transmission to inform sustainability education. This is presented as one move towards constructing what Middlemiss (2014) terms a more ‘socially sensitive’ model of sustainable development.