ABSTRACT
The chapter proposes four pedagogical principles for staging reading and writing activities in environmental and sustainability education (ESE). Together, these principles provide a framework for engaging students in discussions of the sustainability challenges we face today through structured literate activities. The chapter offers an account of the theoretical inspirations to the principles including ecocriticism, reader-response theory and theories of writing and responding. Furthermore, it provides teachers with a practical description of the pedagogical principles using the novel Robinson Crusoe as an example of how the teaching of literature can be organised to address sustainability issues as well as encouraging students to express opinions, emotions and values. The chapter offers strategies and activities that focus on expressing and sharing opinions and emotions acknowledging that doing so requires an equally structured approach as pedagogies that focus on the learning of specific sustainability knowledge and skills.
