ABSTRACT
This chapter documents the key emerging characteristics of Environmental Education and learning in the 1990s, which are captured by the phrase ‘rethink and engage’. This decade had a more critical edge than the reformist agenda of previous decades. Influenced by the sustainable development debates taking place amongst policymakers and academics at the time, many environmental educators came to a realisation that learning, in the preceding decades, had at best led to a more environmentally aware population and that new socio-critical frames were needed to uncover deeper knowledge about the roots of sustainability problems. This motivated further pedagogical shifts and more opportunities for learners to rethink society's relationship with the environment. Learning experiences started to take place outside of science labs and beyond national parks into the arts and humanities curriculum and into communities, which enabled students to make connections between social concerns, everyday life, and natural systems. The 1990s saw support for an educational approach which not only considered immediate environmental improvement as an actual goal but also started to consider educating for the long-term. Early childhood education was quick to respond to this agenda, whilst conservationists and environmentalists continued to wrestle with what this all meant for their own practice. The focus was no longer on direct engagement with local natural areas but more on mindset changes and considering how what is consumed impacts on nature and distant environments.
