Such surveys do not focus on the increasingly common
community-based and social movements which operate in more complex, intractable,
and inevitably political, arenas where shifts in government policy and funding, and
business values and practice, are the goal. It is not just consumer surveys that have
these blind spots; much education practice exhibits it too. Formal and informal
education have followed a similar pattern by focusing on individual actions rather than
more strategic, and overtly political, developing a coherent social movement around
sustainability. Pressure groups campaign for changes in the curriculum, but what is
missing is a systematic engagement in the community by formal education, and by
researchers. 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. If we are fully to understand the
effectiveness of such 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 currently are.