Transformative Pedagogic Practice - Education for Sustainable Development and Water Conflicts in Indian Geography Education

This book explores how the transnational Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) policy is being translated into formal school education in India. Stephanie Leder investigates the ESD's transformative potential for pedagogic practice and builds a set of principles for how the global objectives of the ESD can be interpreted in diverse socio-cultural contexts. Her approach for transformative pedagogic practice emphasizes the promotion of a critical consciousness through argumentation skills. Using the case of water conflicts in geography education in India, the book reveals the contradictions between ESD objectives and curricula, syllabi, textbooks and classroom teaching at secondary schools in Pune, Maharashtra. Leder's approach demonstrates how principles of schooling can be altered towards learner-centered, problem-posing and network-thinking teaching approaches to empower students towards reflective decision-making on the sustainable use of natural resources.


Stephanie Leder holds a PhD in Cultural Geography from the University of Cologne, Germany. She studied geography, English, biology and educational sciences at the University of Cologne and the University of New Brunswick, Canada. For her PhD thesis, she conducted in-depth research on Education for Sustainable Development in policy and practice by examining geography teaching on water resources at secondary schools in Pune, India. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow for Gender, Youth and Inclusive Development at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Kathmandu, Nepal, and led studies in inter- and transdisciplinary projects within the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Program 'Water, Land and Ecosystems' in India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Currently she is a Postdoctoral Researcher for Social and Environmental Justice at the Department of Urban and Rural Development at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Uppsala, Sweden.