Paper short abstract:

The paper argues that many obstacles to education making a meaningful contribution to addressing the environmental multi-crisis are manifestations of a temporal framing of education through "shallow time." It proposes reorienting education towards "deep time" as a way of avoiding these pitfalls.

Paper long abstract:

Education has come to be viewed as an important instrument in humanity’s toolkit in tackling ecological breakdown. Research shows, however, that while many contemporary education systems can contribute to individual-level changes in awareness and behaviour, they are ill-equipped to enable society-level transformation. This paper argues that the gap between expectation of what “education for the environment” can achieve and what it has so far delivered can be explained by bureaucratisation, individualisation, and market capture that are at the heart of much contemporary education policy, research and practice. These dynamics are a consequence of framing education’s utility within “shallow time”, as reflected in frameworks like “21st century skills”. Shifting the temporal frame to deep time—which requires recognition of what happens prior to and beyond the lifespans of those being educated and those delivering the education, as well as rethinking how the utility of education is assessed—can help end the pattern of education reproducing existing social structures and imaginaries, enabling a more disruptive framing more consistent with the idea that education can help prevent rather than facilitate ecological breakdown.