Education for sustainable development in Flanders: the UN Decade and beyond

Written by Katrien Van Poeck.
Related to Sustainability Education.

This chapter addresses the prospects for ESD policymaking in Flanders, a sub-national entity of Belgium, beyond the UN-Decade. An analysis of the policymaking process in the context of the Decade shows how policy discourses and practices are inextricably intertwined with three broader developments in environmental and educational policy: the increasing impact of ESD policy and discourse on environmental education, the framing of social and political problems as learning problems, and ecological modernisation. These trends give shape to the boundaries of a particular policy regime and, thus, affect what is possible and acceptable within Flemish ESD policy and practices in the field. However, this case study also reveals that these developments do not completely determine ESD in Flanders. Drawing on the lessons learnt from this analysis, we go into the proposals for future policymaking. We address two future ESD initiatives and elaborate how both the outcomes of the presented case study and the particular setting in which research and policymaking took place have influenced these policy intentions.

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