Tbilisi’s “Sounds Of Silence”—(In)action in the policy ≠ embodiments of environmental education

Abstract

Abstract Based in the 1977 Tbilisi formalization of Environmental Education (EE), this memory-work study of contemporary silences in Environmental Education Research (EER) emphasizes an embodied∼materialist theorization and activist conception of ecological experience in EE (eco)pedagogy. Relevant empirical-conceptual research drawn from EER Special Issues (SI) provides an evidence-base for re-storying numerous post-Tbilisi silences. Of central importance in critiquing various policy transitions in EE and frequent theory turns in EER are the enigmatically ‘lived’ practices of educative experience (human-culture actions and felt other-than-human-Nature interactions). Ecological experiences within experiential and interdisciplinary EE curriculum are inadequately researched in relation to action. Forty-five years after Tbilisi, the power and promise of its “Recommendations” are re-sounded. Tbilisi’s potentials to reconstruct mainstream education policy have been muted for the past two decades of EER. Evidence-driven critical histories of the praxis of key Tbilisi principles are needed if the narrative continuity of the field is to be radically reclaimed.