ABSTRACT
As we noted at the outset of this book, much has been written about appropriate content, processes and pedagogies for learning in relation to sustainable development. As particular approaches are invented and named, they become attached to particular institutions, which then acquire an interest in their success which goes beyond the purely intellectual. Titles and acronyms are deployed, as are lists of points and principles which, it is argued, capture the wider reality of what happens. As we also noted from the very beginning of this book, even the question of arriving at definitions of terms cuts both ways. On the one hand, continuing debate about definitions seems consistent with the case we have made for the potential contribution of multiple rationalities in the face of uncertainty. An early and still telling discussion of the dangers inherent in definitional standardisation is Robottom’s (1987b). On the other hand, if one is trying to persuade people who are busy doing something else of the significance of a concept like sustainable development, then reducing that concept to a portable form has its advantages. Further, it might be argued that a field incapable of establishing agreed definitions of its most basic terminology is unlikely to make any other sort of progress.
