“The heart of the book dissects our dependence as a species on countless elements of our habitat through examining a series of discrete themes in recent art that can be dynamically explored in educational settings…neither urgency nor creativity is lacking in this excellent volume, and I have every intention of using it in my own teaching.”
—International Journal of Education Through Art
“Art Education for a Sustainable Planet presents a vision of a new sort of art education. It is grounded in the realities of contemporary art and culture, contemporary science, contemporary social life, and traditional knowledges from diverse cultures, as well as in the climate realities facing youth and communities.”
—From the Foreword by Olivia Gude, Angela Gregory Paterakis Professor of Art Education, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
“Joy Bertling has written an engaging and thought-provoking book touching on themes of social transformation, art education, and ecology. Merging art, education, curriculum, and pedagogy, she has created a definitive approach to art education that engages with our fracturing relationships with the natural world. Designed for art educators, the book emphasizes sustainability, eco-art, place-based education, and issues surrounding environment and ecology. Her work is visionary in its focus on the transformation of social, cultural, economic, and political structures. These ambitious goals are translated into strategies and methods for educators that can serve the practical purposes of a critical pedagogy. The book brings together the author’s outstanding contributions to the scholarship of data visualization and ecology in art education. Many examples of contemporary artists work with environmental issues provide aesthetic and artistic insights into socially active responses. Each section includes essential questions for students and educators. What makes this volume particularly distinctive is its comprehensive, well-researched connection to current educational and artistic discourse about ecological issues and its practical support of educators in providing socially engaged and hopeful strategies for understanding and engaging with these critical issues.”
—Mark A. Graham, professor, Brigham Young University
“Dr. Bertling's book is a flare, a spotlight, a microscope, and a mirror. In this environmental crisis, she generously offers us not another pedagogy of lament but rather a means by which we can reflect, articulate, become more aware, act, and teach each other. This book will aid teachers and their students to move beyond sustainability as a mere subject of study, and into a fuller understanding that ecopedagogy is, more than anything, a relational posture where we take care of the earth, knowing full well that all this time it has been taking care of us. Teachers, read this book with other teachers!”
—Jorge Lucero, associate professor, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
