Review
A Review of "Education as the Practice of Eco-Social-Cultural Change" : M. Fettes & S. Blenkinsop (2023). Education as the Practice of Eco-Social-Cultural Change. Palgrave
Australian Journal of Environmental Education, Vol.41(4), pp.1020-1022
09/2025
Appears in Recent Faculty of Education Publications
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Abstract
Education as the Practice of Eco-Social-Cultural Change is an important book that speaks to the need for environmental education to have a voice in broader justice movements as well as to embrace new thinking from environmental justice discourses including through decolonising practices, bridging disciplinary gaps, and attending to the more-than-human. Even while writing this review, global events call to attention a desperate need for change — the US has just pulled out of the Paris agreement on climate change while winter wildfires engulf large parts of LA, Australia braces for more fires and floods, and wars (intensely damaging to environments and all life within) continue to rage in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Education as the Practice of Eco-Social-Cultural Change offers formal and informal educators, activists and researchers a way through this complex terrain. The authors, Mark Fettes and Sean Blenkinsop, argue that much of the current ecological crisis stems from “entrenched beliefs, discourses and behaviours” (p. v) that allow for inequity and injustice and that “the way we’ve been educating our children and young people for the last 150 years or so is directly (co-)responsible for the predicament we are in” (p. 1). Therefore, they argue that education needs to be rethought to avoid reinforcing the same forms of injustice. Although written from the US context, Education as the Practice of Eco-Social-Cultural Change has broad appeal anywhere that Western education practices proliferate which concerns a large swath of the world much of which was forced to adopt Western education through colonial structures (for a Pacific example, see Long and Hayward, Reference Long and Hayward, 2024).
Details
- Title
- A Review of "Education as the Practice of Eco-Social-Cultural Change" : M. Fettes & S. Blenkinsop (2023). Education as the Practice of Eco-Social-Cultural Change. Palgrave
- Creators
- Chantelle Bayes - Southern Cross University
- Publication Details
- Australian Journal of Environmental Education, Vol.41(4), pp.1020-1022
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press; CAMBRIDGE
- Number of pages
- 3
- Identifiers
- 991013285346702368
- Copyright
- © TheAuthor(s), 2025.
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Education
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Review