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The purpose of the present article is to present and illustrate two different ways of analysing the normativity and discursivity of classroom communication during education for sustainable development (ESD). The two types of analysis can provide important knowledge for discussions of ESD in relation to morals and democracy. Both methods are based on pragmatism and the later works of Wittgenstein. The first approach was developed to examine the relationship between cultural and psychological processes in environmental ethical meaning-making. It draws on the endeavours of sociocultural research and cultural psychology to take the individual into account, or in other words, the intra-personal dimension of meaning-making, which is not usually the case in the analysis of ESD. The second method relates to the normativity of ESD. Dewey refers to the apparently implicit socialisation taking place during education as 'collateral learning'. We refer to the content included in subsidiary forms of learning as companion meaning, which either follows on automatically when teaching knowledge content, or becomes collateral learning when one learns scientific meanings. Such meanings can, for example, be concerned with the nature of knowledge and people's relations to nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the implications for sustainability policy of environmental uncertainty and indeterminacy, and relates the associated problems with a conventional understanding of sustainable development to Hayek's critique of collective planning. It suggests that the appropriate recourse is not, however, a Hayekian endorsement of the free market, but an extension of his key idea of spontaneous order to characterise the learning society. The argument is illustrated by a practical application: the analysis of natural capital explored in this Special Issue is shown to be directly relevant to the improvement of the UK's headline sustainability indicators package. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pervasiveness of metaphor in environmental discourse suggests important questions about the role of metaphor in environmental learning. A conception of environmental thinking and action is proposed, which identifies five analytically distinct ‘moments’ of ‘environmental sensemaking’: conceptualising, knowing about, knowing how to respond, responding and acting. The (much-criticised) ‘information deficit’ model of environmental learning requires that the second moment—knowing about the environment—is the only locus of environmental learning. On the information deficit model the only role of metaphor is didactic. On the proposed conception, all five moments of environmental sense-making may be independent moments of environmental learning. Metaphor can have a rhetorical role (encouraging responsiveness) and, more importantly, conceptual metaphors can frame our understanding of the environment. The development of new metaphors plays a key role in environmental learning. The ‘natural capital’ and ‘real options’ metaphors are considered as ‘case studies’ of conceptual (or first-moment) learning. It is argued that while they may be important innovations in environmental sense-making, our general discussion of the role of metaphor in environmental learning suggests that we need to look beyond economic metaphors to improve our understanding of the environment-human relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]