The importance of imagination in education has a significant history (Egan, 1986, 2001; Eisner, 1976; Greene, 1988; Steiner, 1954; Warnock, 1976); however, scholarship is often theoretical, and the involvement of imagination in understanding sustainability is often overlooked (Jones, 1995; Judson, 2010; Stewart, 2009). Imagination has rarely been the subject of Environmental Education (EE) and research. Its nature is contested, and its workings can be concealed by formal notions of knowing and learning. Contemporary environmental philosophies argue that education can often contradict its aims through limited understandings of environment and knowledge (Orr, 1991, 1992; Weir, 2008; Whitehouse, 2011). This thesis reconceptualises imagination as a way of knowing and learning in environmental terms. The study investigates the role of imagination in Education for Sustainability (EfS) contexts and critically analyses how imagination is involved in understanding sustainability for teachers and learners. The possibility of imagination as environmental knowledge, and as essential to resolving environmental problems, is applied in this research.

In our paper, we draw on recent scholarship on food pedagogies and pedagogy studies to explore themes in the collection of articles in this special issue. In particular, we show how the articles variously conceptualise formal and informal pedagogies, their curricula, aims, and potential effects in relation to food and sustainability. Drawing on debates in pedagogy studies, we investigate how the papers reflect on what makes a pedagogy pedagogical. We then turn to food studies literature to identify how the articles in this special issue construct food as a theoretical and empirical object. Given food's multifaceted nature, which means that food works materially, biologically, economically, symbolically and socially, we explore which versions of food and its attributes are profiled across and within the articles. Inspired by critiques on race and class in relation to food and food social movements, in the final section of the paper we ask how the articles and future research on food and environmental education can take account of the racialised, gendered and classed dimensions of education for food sustainability. As part of our discussion, we evaluate the ethics of doing good, the moral economy educators reproduce in relation to class, race and gender, and the contribution feminism and critical race theory can make to future research agendas and writing in the field.

The Editors and staff of the Australian Journal of Environmental Education gratefully thank the following referees for their support of the journal during 2014 and 2015.