Abstract:
This paper examines the history of environmental education in New Zealand over the last fifteen years reviewing that history in the context of concurrent changes in the school curriculum and wider society. Preliminary conclusions concerning the potential role of environmental education as a socially transformative agent are developed as a lens with which to examine ourselves as educators. It concludes that belief in a future constructed around social and environmental justice and the common good requires that in order to counter the political intrusion into education we must expand our role beyond the educational arena into politics.