To return to the title, and the problems of researching, learning and sustainable development, it seems we know, as a field, that we’re not yet sufficiently part of these on the ground developments.
We know that we are not working in these concrete contexts as change takes place, and that we should be. In other words, education has focused on the campus (green, individual, behaviors such as recycling and reducing energy use), while pressure groups have campaigned for changes in the curriculum, but what’s really missing is a systematic engagement in the community by formal education.
As society gradually ‘learns its way forward’, shifting its values, norms, beliefs, and strategies towards a more sustainable model of development, it offers an array of opportunities for learners of all ages to witness, critique, be inspired by and become a part of the changes taking place around them.
This is true of formal (institution-based) education, while informal education (e.g. public awareness campaigns) has followed a similar pattern by focusing on individual actions and sharing scientific data rather than more strategic, and overtly political, messages about the possibility of growing a coherent movement around the sustainability revolution.
If we are fully to understand the effectiveness of community-based programmes and initiatives, and help these grow and develop, then educators and educational researchers need to be much more intimately involved than they are at present.