The Earth Charter International is excited to recommend Dr. Douglas Bourn’s new book, Education for Social Change: Perspectives on Global Learning which was released in 2022. The book explores the different facets of education’s role in promoting social change and includes topics on education for democratic society, socialism, social justice, and global citizenship. It highlights the key role education has played and continues to play as a vehicle for social change.
In the book, Bourn discusses the importance of teachers’ role in social change and education’s role as a liberating force. He challenges the traditional notion of education as a one-way exchange with teachers as deliverers of education and students as receivers. Young people are key to social change, and their role in education is vital. Because of this, Bourn proposes that education should be a two-way exchange, and the inclusion of student voices and their knowledge and opinions are key to learning. He offers thoughts on Education for Transformation, Sustainable Future and Global Citizenship and concludes with the important to cultivate a Pedagogy of Hope.
Bourn also emphasizes the role of international organizations in education for social change and includes a discussion on the Earth Charter’s role. Bourn explains that the Earth Charter brings together discussions on sustainable development, justice, and moral responsibility and has filled a void in discussions and initiatives involving Education for Sustainable Development by including “ethical, cultural and political dimensions” that had previously been missing. He also notes that the EC has become a “mechanism for engaging individuals, communities, local and regional authorities, businesses, trade unions and civil society organizations from throughout the world” and has been used to “support peace negotiations, as a basis for educational textbooks, as a code of ethics and as a lobbying tool to governments and international bodies.”
During the UN’s Decade on Education for Sustainable Development from 2005 – 2014, the Earth Charter was especially influential. Some examples of it can be found in Good Practices in Education for Sustainable Development Using the Earth Charter, a publication of case studies from around the world detailing how the Charter has been used in education. For example, the Paulo Freire Institute in Brazil used the Earth Charter to develop the idea of eco-pedagogy, seeing the EC as both “a code of planetary ethics and a call to action.”
About the author
Professor Douglas Bourn teaches at the University College London as a Professor of Development Education where he is also the Director of the Development Education Research Centre which he founded in 2006. He is a leader in the field of Development Education and created the first master’s program in development education and global learning in 2008. He has also established the Academic Network on Global Education and Learning (ANGEL), founded the International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning, the first academic journal in the field and is editor of the Bloomsbury Handbook of Global Education.