Taking stock of the UN Decade of education for sustainable development: the policy-making process in Flanders |
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| Authors: | Katrien Van Poeck Joke Vandenabeele Hans Bruyninckx |
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| Institution: | 1. Laboratory of Education and Society, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium;2. HIVA Research Institute, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium |
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| Abstract: | In this paper, we address the implementation of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Flanders, a sub-national entity of Belgium. Our analysis shows how the policy-making process in Flanders is inextricably intertwined with three developments in environmental and educational policy: the increasing impact of ESD policy and discourse on environmental education, the framing of social and political problems as learning problems, and ecological modernisation. These trends give shape to a post-ecologist and post-political policy regime and, thus, affect what is possible and acceptable within Flemish ESD policy. However, this case study also revealed that these developments do not completely determine ESD policy-making in Flanders. Our examination thus allowed us to understand how the actual policy translation in a particular local setting brings about powers that legitimise and maintain as well as counteract the bounds of the policy regime that emerged in the context of the UN Decade. |
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| Keywords: | education for sustainable development ESD UN Decade of ESD policy-making ecological modernisation governmentalisation |
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