Expanding the Field: Revisiting Environmental Education Principles Through Multidisciplinary Frameworks

Abstract

In response to calls for discourse that builds on the substantive structure of environmental education in efforts to further the scope of the field, this article reexamines key principles of environmental education through the multidisciplinary lenses of critical pedagogy, the environmental justice movement, and more recent definitions of place-based education. Understanding that environmental education's key concepts of environment and environmental literacy are culturally specific—not universal—ideas opens the field for more diverse, locally appropriate, and inclusive pedagogies. By reflecting on environmental education's shortcomings in the field, revisiting its foundational concepts and themes, and integrating multidisciplinary methodologies, the author makes a case for broadening the scope of what is included in environmental education discourse and continuing to challenge the present and future of its theory and practice.