ABSTRACT

Meeting the Challenges of Existential Threats through Educational Innovation is the first book of its kind to provide an educational and systematic analysis of problems and solutions regarding the most pressing threats that humankind is facing.

The book makes a case for the importance of education responding to significant threats; including climate change, pandemics, decline in global biodiversity, overpopulation, egoism, ideologies, nuclear, biological and chemical warfare, inequality, artificial intelligence, and ignorance and the distortion of truth. Written by leading experts in their field based on cutting-edge research, the chapters explore these issues and offer suggestions for how education can address these problems in the future.

This groundbreaking and highly topical book will be an essential reading for academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of education research, environmental studies, educational politics and organizational management.

chapter 2|16 pages

SSE-based frame of reference

Outlines for a global curriculum—turning existential threats into resources

chapter 3|15 pages

Climate change

Foundations for a transformative learning agenda

chapter 4|25 pages

Biodiversity

The decline in global biodiversity and how education can be part of the solution

chapter 5|18 pages

Overpopulation

A century of debate that deserves re-examination

chapter 6|13 pages

Infectious disease, pandemics, and education

From miasms to COVID-19

chapter 7|17 pages

Infectious disease threats

Antibiotic resistance, COVID-19, and future pandemics

chapter 8|12 pages

Holding oneself in the world

Is there a need for good egoism?

chapter 9|18 pages

Inequality

Education, opportunity and existential threat

chapter 10|18 pages

Ideologies, threats and sustainability

How can education and knowledge of the unforeseen help reduce the threat posed by ideologies?

chapter 12|17 pages

Artificial intelligence

Is the power matched with responsibility?

chapter 13|15 pages

Ignorance and truth

chapter |3 pages

Afterword