Towards an ecologization of education

The paper begins by reviewing, philosophically, some key concepts and ideas that have shaped important aspects both of how we perceive environmental issues and of our attitudes towards nature. Some currently influential views that seek to undermine the authority of appeals to nature in environmental decision-making are identified. In response, the paper develops a phenomenological ecology that reveals important ways in which nature is transcendent and possesses its own integrity, agency, and intrinsic value that need to be reaffirmed in our thinking about the environment and environmental education. It is argued that developing a properly receptive-responsive relationship to these aspects of nature is central to human wellbeing and therefore to education as a whole, and that this entails a need significantly to “ecologize” education.