The Allen Strom Eureka Prize for Environmental Education 2000 and 2001

Extract

In the five years since the NSW Environment Protection Authority sponsored the first $10,000 Allen Strom Eureka Prize for Environmental Education, there has been a perceptible climate change in the context for environmental education. Although the aim of the award—‘to encourage and reward excellence in the design, implementation and evaluation of environmental education programs’—remains relevant and has not been amended since 1997, many readers might be asking, ‘what, no mention of sustainability?’

Those who promote education for sustainability (EfS) see it as a powerful and embracing framework for environmental education and their efforts have gained momentum within a number of critical areas: in the professional and research literature (including, of course, the AJEE), within policies at international, national, state and local levels, and within professional discourses and practices. However, EfS has rolled out very much as a work in progress and there is, as yet, no orthodoxy (thankfully!) about exactly what the term encompasses.