Today, in 2025, as an Earthly community, we face the ongoing triple planetary crises of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste. Across the UK, and in many other parts of the world, we are also asking far-reaching questions about education systems, including formal schooling, and the extent to which education has planetary flourishing and interspecies relations at heart. This period of reform and revaluation of education is evident in the UK in the reviews of the national curricula of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which are currently at different stages of development. However, we might question the extent to which ideas of Environment and Education are at the heart of these reviews and reforms.

Given the complex global environmental challenges we face, and the widespread recognition of the role education has in achieving environmentally just and sustainable futures, in this BERA Bites collection guest editors Elizabeth Rushton and Amanda Anderson have organised 13 blog posts that look across broad themes of Education and Environment.

The contributions to this issue explore: 

• the ways in which in Aotearoa, New Zealand, Māori knowledge systems (Mātauranga) can enrich and inform understandings of both environment and education that extend across human and more-than-human worlds
• how education, as a colonial project, has been wholly and deliberately unresponsive to place
• how arts-based approaches as part of outdoor learning can enhance nature connectedness
• the intersection of education, place and wellbeing, plus shared learning from a Beach School network in north-west England
• how a newly developed undergraduate module, ‘Introduction to climate change, social justice and sustainability’, provides opportunities for action and active participation, for both students and educators
• the need to pay greater attention to those largely marginalised in decision making about education and the environment, including children and young people with learning disabilities
• the place of environmental activism in education
• young people’s food choices and complex relationships with food as a potential route to ethical citizenship and sustainable education
• the importance of education settings, including early years settings and primary schools, to ensure that all children have opportunities to access outdoor environments and learning
• the importance of accessible neighbourhood play areas with varied environmental qualities in supporting children’s physical and mental wellbeing
• the development of children’s sense of self, in the context of an alternative outdoor early childhood provision in Scotland
• the importance of initial teacher education (ITE) and outlining a ‘natural curriculum’ for student primary teachers
• the ways in which outdoor learning can support both lifelong learning and healthy ageing.