Sustainability Frontiers seeks to both challenge, counter and redress the anthropocentrism, the human-centeredness, that characterizes much of the theory and practice of sustainability related education. The field is marked by an instrumental valuing of the natural world i.e. seeing nature as resource, its value dependent on the measurability of its usefulness to human purpose and economy.
Set against this we adopt a bio-centric worldview that sees intrinsic value in fauna, flora and natural habitats, i.e. they are seen as having value in their own right as they live their own lives and pursue their own life purposes and trajectories. We hold that it is vital for human wellbeing to restore nature connection and intimacy to the point of deep entanglement in the natural world. For this reason our leaning activities and approaches prioritize the nature-oriented learning that education for sustainable development has largely set aside. Accordingly, the programs we offer address place-based learning, bioregional education, vernacular learning, and re-wilding learning, biodiversity learning, metamorphic nature learning, ‘deep time’ geological learning, nature kinship and migration. We also offer learning activities and programs that are meant to help and inspire those despairing and grieving at natural habitat and species loss and distraught at the ravages that are being done to our beautiful world. We hold strongly to the belief that sustainability education can never be truly transformative unless it builds learner reconnection and intimacy with nature.
Projects
In 2024 David Selby completed a book on transformative nature learning, Down the Combe and into the Meadow: Reflections on Nature and Learning.
The book introduces the concepts of metamorphic learning, activist learning and authentic hope, addressing issues such human disconnect from the natural world, place-based learning, climate breakdown, rewilding and biodiversity loss and restoration, confronting environmental despair, rethinking the notions of native and alien species, species migration and dispersal, nature celebratory rites and rituals.
The book is listed in the key Publications section below. For more detailed coverage of the book click here; to order the book click here.
Key Publications
David Selby (2024). Down the Combe and Into the Meadow: Reflections on Nature and Learning. Ilfracombe: Blue Poppy Publishing. 346pp
Daivd Selby, Fumiyo Kagawa & Rowan Oberman. (2020). Along the Cays and Bays: Climate Change Learning in a Small Island Developing State, Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review, 30, 31-56.
David Selby & Fumiyo Kagawa. (2018). Archipelagos of Learning: Environmental education on islands, Environmental Conservation, 45 (2), 137-146.
David Selby. (2017). Education for Sustainable Development, Nature and Vernacular Learning, Center for Educational Policy Studies Journal, vol. 7, no.1, 9-27.
David Selby & Fumiyo Kagawa. Emerging Dimensions of Global Environmental Education, For Environmental Education, issue 59 (issue 14 online), no pagination.
