The Nature of Transformation: Environmental Adult Education is based on 15 years of educating for social-environmental change around the world. It is for adult and community educators, trainers, literacy and health care practitioners, social activists, community artists and animators, labour educators, and professors in higher education interested in weaving environmental issues in to their educational practice. It is also for environmental activists and educators who want to link social issues to environmental issues and problems. This book is a contribution to the discourse and practice of adult education in the community and/or the academy, aimed to respond creativity and critically the contemporary socio-environmental crisis and to encourage hope and a stronger sense of political agency through an ecological approach to teaching, and learning. The Nature of Transformation includes a discussion of key adult education theories we used to augment our educational practice, provides a plethora educational activities, shares workshop design considerations and some of the challenges we faced in our wok, as well as stories from adult and community educators around the world. The book concludes with a list of resources to enhance understandings of adult education theory and practice. The Nature of Transformation illustrates how to critically and creatively integrate the rest of nature, concepts of ecological and gender and justice, citizenship, critical environmental consciousness and activism into educating and learning in community settings, organisations, education institutions or workplaces. In particular, there is an emphasis on using the arts as a tool for learning and change. With its emphasis on acknowledging and confronting ecological oppression, working towards socio-environmental justice, ensuring hope and fun are integral to the learning process, encouraging defiance, agency and creativity, challenging assumptions, and helping people to find solutions environmental adult education is a valuable player in any pedagogical quest for change and transformation.

The Nature of Transformation: Environmental Adult Education is based on 15 years of educating for social-environmental change around the world. It is for adult and community educators, trainers, literacy and health care practitioners, social activists, community artists and animators, labour educators, and professors in higher education interested in weaving environmental issues in to their educational practice. It is also for environmental activists and educators who want to link social issues to environmental issues and problems. This book is a contribution to the discourse and practice of adult education in the community and/or the academy, aimed to respond creativity and critically the contemporary socio-environmental crisis and to encourage hope and a stronger sense of political agency through an ecological approach to teaching, and learning. The Nature of Transformation includes a discussion of key adult education theories we used to augment our educational practice, provides a plethora educational activities, shares workshop design considerations and some of the challenges we faced in our wok, as well as stories from adult and community educators around the world. The book concludes with a list of resources to enhance understandings of adult education theory and practice. The Nature of Transformation illustrates how to critically and creatively integrate the rest of nature, concepts of ecological and gender and justice, citizenship, critical environmental consciousness and activism into educating and learning in community settings, organisations, education institutions or workplaces. In particular, there is an emphasis on using the arts as a tool for learning and change. With its emphasis on acknowledging and confronting ecological oppression, working towards socio-environmental justice, ensuring hope and fun are integral to the learning process, encouraging defiance, agency and creativity, challenging assumptions, and helping people to find solutions environmental adult education is a valuable player in any pedagogical quest for change and transformation.

1. Introduction; Knowing Where We Stand; Standing Where We Know; Process, Context and Participants; Content of This Book; A Few More Things; Who We Are; 2. The Seeds: Education Theories and Principles From Which We Work; Adult Education; Liberal Adult Education; Critical/Progressive Adult Education; Gender Difference and Feminist Adult Education; Arts-Based Adult Education: The Creative Turn; The Arts, Society and Knowledge; The Arts, Adult Education and Learning; Anti-Racist Adult Education: Greening Justice; Experiential Outdoor Learning: Into the Forest and Up the Trees; Environmental Adult Education: Transforming Human-Earth Relations; 3. Inscape, Landscape, Learning and Life: Environmental Workshops at Work; Types and Aims of Community-Based Workshops; Issue-Based Workshops; Process-Based Workshops; Education, Learning and Knowledge; Creating the Learning/Teaching Milieu; Conveying the Purpose; Building in Theory; Knowing Your ‘Audience’; Our Story of Racism; The Potential of Humour; Art and Creativity; A Story of the Arts; Valuing Emotion; Time, Timing and Group Size; Valuing Small Group Process; Balancing the Individual and the Collective; Ecological Context and Framework; The Ecological Agenda; The Checklist; 4. The Praxis of Environmental Adult Education; Introductory Activities: Weaving Natural and Social Worlds; Green Activist’s Calisthenics; Opening with Nature; Tell us a Story;Connecting to the Earth; Environmental Buses: Travelling Together; Artistic Introduction; Learning Our Nature; The Tree of Education and Learning Practices; Re-Connecting Activities; Re-connecting through Nature and Song; Refreshing Our Memories; Looking Back; Broadening the Analysis of Oppression: Weaving in the Rest of Nature; The Discourse Tree; The River of Learning and Transformation; Exclusion and Inclusion; Building a More Healthy Community Network: The Sun at the Centre; Inscape and Landscape; Living Gender; Reconceptualising Work; Ecological Media Literacy;Learning Through Our Historical Roots: Weaving Our Landscapes From Memory; The Historical Environmental Learning Stream; Personal Environmental Historical Stream; Ecological Storytelling; Variation: Nature as Foe; Women’s Ways of Knowing and Being with Nature; Are They Just Words?; Words and Ideas; Altering the Environment by the Book; Theory Matters; Fishpond: Facilitator/Organiser Presentation; Moving Forward: Understanding Past Learning; The River of Theory for Transformation; The Art and Challenge of Critical Thinking; The Theoretical Tree: From Roots to Leaves; Learning And/Through Landscape; Sense Mapping; Variation: Bio-regional community Walk-A-Bout; The Wise Soil; Knowing and Nature; Nature in Mind; Sound Mapping; Sculpturing a Tree; Exploring the Night; The Politics of Consumption; Zen of Consumerism: “Waste R Us”?; Globalisation and Socialisation “R Us?”; Corporations “R Us”?; Human and Ecosystem Health: Food for Thought; The Chemical Stew; Variation; Further Variation; Preparing Our Future; The Shopping Cart Survey; Food Fortune Hunting; Cooking or Ready Made; To Weed or Not to Weed; From Words to Action; Open-Air Environmental Adult Education Market; Variation: The Environmental Adult Education Market; The Art of Educative Action; Variation: Learning for Change; From Discourse to Action; Creativity in Action; Re-Energising the Practitioner: The Mountain of Passion, Power and Purpose; Who is the Expert?; Evaluations and Closure; Coalition Building Through Song, Theatre and Poetry; Final Refl ections; Accomplishments and Challenges; One Word Circle Evaluation; Stringing Ourselves Together; Nature Circle Evaluation; ‘Post-it’ Evaluations; Written Evaluations; Head, Hands, and Heart; Meditational Closing; Tree of Expectations; Forest of Accomplishments; 5. Global Environmental Adult Education Praxis and Stories; Material Matters; Women Expressing Needs and Ideas Through Banner Painting; The Positive Energy Quilts: The Story of a VisualProtest; Jean (Raging Granny); Ecologial Study Cirlces and Mapping; Environmental Adult Education Study Circles; Green Community Mapping; Experimental Learning in the Outdoors; Experiencing Place; The Ecological Art of Technology; A moving Lens on the Environment; Participatory Video for Empowerment; Art Of/And Communication; Communications Activity: Poster Drawing; A Story of the Developers’ Feast; Shadow Puppetry for Environmental Adult Education; Puppetry and the People’s Court: A Story From Australia; The Age of Beauty: A Story of Consciousness; Bigfoot Comes in From the Cold: A Story; The Art of Waste; Community and Household Waste Workshops; The Garbage Collection: A Labour and Environment Story; A Show of Hands; 6. Postscript; Resistance and Fear; Silenced Voices: Women and the Rest of Nature; Learning Experience: The Positive, Negative, and Unexpected; Keeping on Track; Follow Nature’s Lead: The Virtue and Challenges of Diversity; Not Everyone Thinks Your Workshop is Great; Working as a Team; Further Lessons Learned; Easy Answers?: You Make the Road by Walking; 7. References and Further Resources; Adult Education; Environmental Adult Education and Outdoor Education and Learning; Feminist Adult Education and Gender; Anti-Racist and Aboriginal Education; The Arts, Adult Education and the Media.