This thesis explores how to promote, through education, environmental sustainability, intercultural understanding and personal signification in a mutually compatible manner. These aims are considered to be particularly well served through a transdisciplinary approach which combines perspectives drawn particularly, but not exclusively, from the fields of geography and environmental studies with 'place' and 'landscape' representing powerful integrative concepts. An 'enactivist' epistemology is presented which sees both a continuity, but also qualitative distinction, between human perception and that found in the non-human world. Such a perspective stresses the importance of both the milieu and the human subject in the perceptual process, and the neologism emplaced imagination is presented to stress this dyadic relationship. In addition, a neo-Piagetian epistemology is defended in which the emplaced imagination is understood to undergo a series of qualitatively different developmental (shifts', with a 'postformal' stage (heuristically referred to as 'wisdom' and characterised by a multiperspectival outlook and a motivation to work towards the Common Good) being seen as the desirable goal. This goal is seen to be promoted by transformative or 'fourth order education' which is most likely to be associated with adult learning. A special focus is therefore placed on Higher Education and, in particular, the development of 'transformative' or 'vanguard' educators. An attempt is made to generate a 'mixed discourse' that permits a rapprochement between science, religion and art through the presentation of a non-materially reductive ontology within which to set this educational project. Implications of such a perspective for human-environment/place transactions are considered, drawing heavily on recent thinking in geography and environmental psychology and philosophy. Finally, important educational implications of the preceding chapters are considered.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:530907 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Morgan, Alun David |
| Publisher | University College London (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10006685/ |
Page generated in 0.0016 seconds