Ecoliteracy and ecopedagogy for environmental sustainability in education.

In support of ecocentric management learning through arts-based learning

Abstract

The planet faces a global ecological crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and species extinction. Conventional management approaches are failing to address this crisis. There is an urgent need to adopt an ecology-centred (ecocentric) ethic to support management learning. We interweave positive and critical perspectives to question the pervasive neoliberal logic dominating management learning and practice. We argue that the education for sustainable development goals embraced by management education, offered as the framework for addressing environmental concerns, fails to recognise the limits to industrial growth and remains anthropocentric and bound by economic logic.  Instead, we propose arts-based ecopedagogy as a radical challenge to management learning enabling reorientation towards the praxis necessary to support transformation in learner consciousness and thus influence a future management practice.  We provide practice examples that draw upon arts-based education, ecopedagogy and ecoliteracy focusing on biodiversity. We propose future directions that integrate ecological and human well-being within management curricula.