ABSTRACT
This century has seen the increasing recognition that environmental and sustainability education (ESE) is not effecting the changes needed to halt the degradation of our Earth’s biosphere. Transformative learning is frequently used to describe the type of learning needed to bring about these changes, as it involves a transformation in people’s worldviews and how they view themselves in relation to the Earth, other people and nonhumans. However, a learning theory that could explain this required change is not often found in ESE research. This chapter explores the potential of Mezirow’s transformative learning theory to elucidate learning in ESE. The target for transformation in ESE is identified along with strategies that could be used to facilitate shifts in people’s worldviews. However, transformative learning theory remains incomplete, and how these gaps relate to ESE is considered as a future research direction.
