How can children learn to envision and become citizens of a common world, and how can they learn to work across frontiers to avert environmental disaster? What do we know about the ways that schools and other institutions build ecological responsibility both for their local and world communities? In years past, environmental disasters, from Japan's catastrophe in Minamata to those in Bhopal, India, Ukraine's Chernobyl, and Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island, were seen as national problems with national solutions. But educators today recognize that ozone depletion, global warming, and CO2 emissions are global problems, demanding global solutions and stewardship. This recognition has led environmental educator to redefine ‘citizenship’ and what it means to be a member of a global ecological community. Policy makers, institutions, and educators are now responding to this challenge and helping to raise general awareness of the need for environmental action. What lessons can be drawn from their experiences?

The aim of this special issue of the Comparative Education Review is to present on-going research while also stimulating new understandings of environmental education worldwide. We seek critical assessments of existing model programs and policy initiatives in environmental education and education for sustainable development at the school, local community, national, and international levels. We invite contributors to present findings from original investigations, to share what is known about the development, implementation, and results of environmental education programs and policies, and to analyze the national and transnational political and economic forces impeding their implementation. The editors recognize the environment as an ethical, political, technical, sociological and aesthetic opportunity and challenge. The Comparative Education Review therefore welcomes submissions from diverse perspectives, including political theory, law, environmental sociology, and green school architecture and planning.

We anticipate that the special issue will appear in August or November 2010. Although there is no absolute deadline for submission, manuscripts will be considered starting in June 2009. Submissions will be peer-reviewed, just as articles for regular issues are evaluated. For instructions to contributors, and information on how to upload an article to the CER using the Editorial Manager system, see the “For Authors” tab of our webpage:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/cer/current. Authors may also request help from the managing editors (John Collins and Sarah Fuller, cer@psu.edu) or from Associate Editor Heidi Ross (haross@indiana.edu).