Environmental Adult Education: Ecological Learning, Theory, and Practice for Socioenvironmental Change : New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, Number 99

Environmental adult education brings an ecological perspective to studies of adult learning by concretizing the interconnections between people's experiences of environmental deterioration and recognition of the destructive powers of the global economy. This volume situates environmental adult education within a socio-political and eco-epistemological framework, explores how new language and metaphors can counteract problematic modern worldviews, and analyzes the potential of environmental, justice-based learning to combat socio-environmental oppressions. Environmental adult education for community sustainability situates local knowledge within a global pedagogy and activism of survival. Practical and theoretical considerations of environmental popular education within indigenous people's social movements are explained, and the relationship among women, the environment, and adult learning is explored. The aim of environmental adult literacy is to challenge scientific knowledge as the fundamental structure of learning, and to revalue people's experiential knowledge. A transformative ecological understanding of lifelong learning reconnects humans with nature and fosters social dialogue and action. Environmental adult education provides a rich and provocative discourse, and this volume sourcebook will be useful to readers seeking to connect social and ecological issues in their educational work in community, classroom, or social movements.