Neoliberalism and Environmental Education

This timely book situates environmental education within and against neoliberalism, the dominant economic, political, and cultural ideology impacting both education and the environment. Proponents of neoliberalism imagine and enact a world where the primary role of the state is to promote capital markets, and where citizens are defined as autonomous entrepreneurs who are to fulfill their needs via competition with, and surveillance of, others.

These ideas interact with environmental issues in a number of ways and Neoliberalism and Environmental Education engages this interplay with chapters on how neoliberal ideas and actions shape environmental education in formal, informal and community contexts. International contributors consider these interactions in agriculture and gardening, state policy enactments, environmental science classrooms, ecoprisons, and in professional management and educational accountability programs. The collection invites readers to reexamine how economic policy and politics shape the cultural enactment of environmental education. This book was originally published as a special issue of Environmental Education Research.

Joseph Henderson is a Research Scientist at the University of Delaware, USA. Trained as an anthropologist of environmental and science education, his research investigates how sociocultural, political, and economic factors influence teaching and learning in emerging energy and climate systems.

David Hursh is a Professor at the Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, University of Rochester, NY, USA. His research situates education policy and reform in the United States and globally within the context of a neoliberal social imaginary.

David Greenwood is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair of Environmental Education at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. His scholarship, teaching, and activism revolve around place-based, environmental, holistic, and sustainability education.