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William B. Stapp, a major author of the founding documents of environmental education (EE), foreshadowed the triple concerns of education for sustainable development (ESD) with environment, social justice and economic health. Yet EE in the USA tended to follow the advocacy orientation of the environmental movement of the 1970s and later, following criticism, largely aligned with science education. Stapp’s original version of EE is still widely practiced in the USA and in many places around the world. Today EE and ESD have an overlapping and intertwined existence. Perhaps it does not matter what we call it; we need quality education that prepares people to understand multiple views; to listen and communicate with others; to vision and evaluate options; to collect, synthesize and understand data; to learn how others have balanced contentious elements of an issue; and to be able to adopt actions.

As environmental issues become more complex, the public may be less interested in becoming knowledgeable enough to participate in decisionmaking. Yet its input can be critically important in some community-based issues. A community forum is one tool designed to provide information, enable participants to ask questions to experts and create an open atmosphere for discussing an issue that requires relatively little investment from the participants. We used this tool to explore the issue of using wood to create electricity. Our results suggest that participants gained knowledge about the issue. As long as their concerns were addressed, nearly twice as many participants felt positive about such a proposed facility after the forum (81 per cent) than before (43 per cent, n = 108). Such activities could be successful strategies to engage the public in decision-making because they respect the real limits on time, attention and knowledge and enable people to participate at an appropriate scale. To reproduce this community forum, we suggest using credible but neutral experts, creating a nonjudgemental atmosphere, allowing people to ask their questions and sharing the results with elected officials.

Research in the disciplines of education, science education, and environmental education has a rich history. While research in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) may be related to these traditions, there is a need for ESD to carve a new niche that promotes high quality and effective ESD programmes. With an eye towards practice and applied research, this paper suggests that research in ESD focus on strategies that promote sustainable behaviours and engage adult citizens in decision making. Researchers can build on the relevant work in psychology, sociology, education, policy and communication that relates to environmental behaviour and citizen participation. ESD researchers will play important roles on teams of engineers, agriculturalists, economists and architects, for example, as they implement more sustainable technologies.