New issue of the International Review of Education out now

Geographically, the articles featured in this latest issue of IRE present research conducted in Hungary, Australia, Germany, Iran and Nepal; as well as a bibliometric study not limited to any particular country or world region.

Topics include the effectiveness of enhancing environmental attitudes through an escape game, the relationship between digital learning and sustainability; the role of massive open online courses in advancing education for sustainable development; the challenges of making school-based parent cafés genuinely inclusive educational spaces; adult learner engagement in sustainability-related learning activities; the advantages of task-centred learning in industrial training, learners' interaction with teachers, fellow pupils, learning content and the user interface in digital learning; and a decolonial perspective of teacher agency for Indigenous languages in education.

In his introduction to the issue, editor Paul Stanistreet notes that while Sustainable Development Goal 4 has galvanized much meaningful activity in education, the overall picture is one of underachievement, with countries falling short against key benchmarks and education funding in decline as a proportion of public spending. There is a danger, in this context, that countries will double down and focus resources on core national priorities such as school attendance and completion, and further reduce support for adult education and lifelong learning.

He argues that this approach is short-sighted and self-defeating, and likely to have unintended negative consequences for other sectors, as well as for the system as a whole. Instead of narrowing our focus further, we should recognize that the problems in the system are not independent of one another and need to be addressed as part of a changing dynamic system.

Instead of further dismantling the lifelong learning infrastructure, we should look to 'rewild education', he writes, converting the 'monoculture of human capital formation and behavioural standardisation for economic and administrative stability' into a healthier, more 'biodiverse' landscape of learning, seeing the system as a connected whole and recognizing the value in each stage, setting and modality. The post-2030 education agenda, he argues, should foreground the right of every individual to participate in a lifelong learning ecosystem that supports wellbeing, agency, inclusion, decent work and active citizenship throughout life.

This, he notes, would 'mark a major philosophical shift in thinking about education, away from seeing human beings as units of a market society to be shaped and made useful in the interests of economic and social stability, towards a view of people as democratic agents, citizens whose opinions and contributions matter and who have a right to a say over their own lives'.

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