PRAISE FOR BOOK
I have just finished reading Transformative Sustainability Education. I am blown about by its comprehensive scope – its breadth and its depth. I am touched by the way arguments are presented with love and concern. It’s deeply personal and political, with inspirational pedagogical approaches from which educators, teaching across the life course, will learn, unlearn, relearn. This is one of those ‘must have’ books as you will go back to it over and over again.
​
Professor Emerita Shirley Walters,
University of the Western Cape, South Africa and
President of PIMA - Promoting Interrogating & Mobilizing Adult Learning and Education
Lange is bold in the task she undertakes, and this boldness inspires! With the Copernican Revolution, Nicolas Copernicus changed our worldview from an earth-centered universe to a heliocentric one. Lange challenges us to change our worldview again, this time from the mechanistic clock-like universe of to a relational view of interconnected systems. This book is a “labour of love” moving Lange’s pen in a flow state, only possible Csikszentmihalyi says, when we have put in our ten thousand hours. It is this flow state that carries one to read what might otherwise be a tedious history; but this version has such life and passion that it moves through the reader. This book is quite a ride. Strap in and get ready!
Dr. Betsy Jardine,
Cape Breton University, Canada
This is a personal, brave and substantial book – and is very timely. It is an impressive work, detailed, informative, carefully researched and argued whilst infused throughout by the author’s deep love of, and concern for, planet and people. As a historical resource and commentary on the evolution of sustainability education, the book is invaluable. But beyond this, the author’s philosophic argument – with regard to the nature and possibility of a life affirming paradigm of education based on relationality – is inspiring, and in parallel with my own view, much needed; not least as it transcends the bounds of much of normal and limited discourse on sustainability education.
Stephen Sterling Emeritus Professor of Sustainability Education,
University of Plymouth, Plymouth, United Kingdom
Elizabeth Lange's book is a veritable tour de force, documenting the history of environmentalism, sustainability education, and transformative learning. She offers a deep dive into the history of how Western Civilization led us into the current climate crisis and what it will take to reimagine the kind of education that will lead us forward. Drawing from Indigenous and feminine wisdoms, as well as a decolonizing approach to pluriversality, interconnectivity, and relationality, the book culminates in a profound and hopeful vision for the power and potential transformative sustainability education. Educators in all disciplines will benefit from reading this book.
Catherine Etmanski
Professor, School of Leadership Studies
Faculty of Social and Applied Sciences
Royal Roads University, Canada
Elizabeth Lange's Transformative Sustainability Education: Reimagining Our Future is a groundbreaking contribution to the field of environmental and sustainability education. Through its rigorous analysis, practical insights, and inspiring vision, the book challenges readers to rethink the purpose and potential of education in addressing the most pressing challenges of our time. Lange offers a path forward towards a more just, equitable, and sustainable world. For educators, policymakers, and concerned citizens alike, Transformative Sustainability Education is essential reading—a call to action to reimagine the future of education and our collective responsibility to shape a more just and sustainable world.
Patrick Howard
Professor, School of Education and Health
Cape Breton University
This book successfully combines the personal and cosmic in a search for a vision of education that is equal to the serious human and ecological challenges of our times. Having set the stage for understanding the complex reality of the Western project of education, Elizabeth furnishes the architectonics of a curriculum of lifelong education that could help us all see and challenge our complicity in awful colonial histories and systematic industrial despoliation of our earth while pointing us to a future that curves in a graceful sweep back to our deep origins and out toward a new, hope-filled relation with the cosmos. This book offers a spiritual vision of a future that can save us from environmental devastation and human despair.
Steven Hodge,
Griffith Institute for Educational Research
Griffith University, Australia
Transformative Sustainability Education offers an impressive historical recap of sustainability which grounds our understanding of our past to help inform how we can make contributions towards a better future. I come back to this text, again and again. This is a valuable body of work
that offers a foundation to understanding our world. It can be applied across many disciplines to spur innovative thinking and hope for anyone seeking to create change.
Noreen Javed, CSR-P, MEd Candidate