The Decade Following Alternative Paradigms in Environmental Education Research

Abstract

Children, Youth and Environments Vol 13, No.1 (Spring 2003) ISSN 1546-2250 Retrospective The Decade Following Alternative Paradigms in Environmental Education Research Rick Mrazek The University of Lethbridge In 1994, Louise Chawla reviewed the monograph Alternative Paradigms in Environmental Education Research (Mrazek 1993a), published by the North American Association for Environmental Education. To me, her review was very accurate and insightful and a great credit to Children’s Environments (CE) in its choice of reviewers. It is a pleasure to be invited to look back over the last 10 to 14 years and reflect on the vision, the challenges, and the promises surrounding and evolving from this publication for this author, as it relates to the review. Although there have been incredible advances in our knowledge, understandings, and in particular our communication technologies, the attitudinal and societal perceptions related to this work may have changed very little. The Original Vision At its annual conference in 1990, the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) [http://www.naaee.org/] held a symposium called “Contesting Paradigms in Environmental Education Research.” The symposium took up questions about the nature and history of different research paradigms: the assumptions that each makes about theory and practice, including definitions of rigor, validity, and generalizability, and views about the nature of teachers, learners, subject matter, and the learning environment. Contributions there became the nucleus for the monograph. Chawla correctly identified that “according to the editor, Rick Mrazek, the purpose of the collection is to invite participation in debate over philosophy, theory, and practice in environmental research, with the goal of ultimately finding “signposts which help 282 provide direction.” That direction, the reader was left to assume, was to make sense of the debate itself and to select personally congenial research approaches as starting points to begin a journey of exploration into environmental education research. It was gratifying to read, “For readers who are interested in understanding the status of North American environmental education research at this time, it is an illuminating volume”(Chawla 1994). The shortcomings identified were also known to the author and readily identified the need to continue this work. When the original printing of the monograph was depleted and there was no indication from the NAAEE for a further printing, this work was made available online. In the first four years of being searchable online, the “hit” counter topped out at 10,000. This work was subsequently translated into Spanish through the efforts of Edgar Gonzalez Gaudiano and published by Universidad De Guadalajara, Jal., Mexico (Mrazek 1996). It was used as the text in research courses for the first graduate programs in Environmental Education at three universities in Mexico and through distance education in Central and South America. The Challenges It is difficult to describe the tension, and support, that existed around these efforts. Louise Chawla captures part of this in her observation that “the most extreme example of combativeness rather than cooperation is the paper ‘Beyond Behaviorism’ by Ian Robottom. Robottom…notes that the original 1990 symposium on which the monograph is based was titled ‘Contesting Paradigms in Environmental Education Research’ and he argues that ‘contesting paradigms,’ not ‘alternative paradigms,’ should have been maintained in the monograph title” (Chawla 1994). In order to bring contributions representing a number of different research orientations and philosophies together under one cover, some concessions were necessary. Chawla observed that this could be viewed as either a major strength or weakness of the work: “In keeping with its goal of inviting the broadest possible participation, it presents different approaches critically but non-judgmentally, leaving final evaluation and choices up to the reader.” This was a similar approach taken by Marcinkowski and Mrazek (1996) in 283 Research in Environmental Education, which was the result of several years of collaborative work among several university faculty and graduate students across North America. This annotated bibliography of research included theses, journal and professional organization articles as well as structures for accessing and interpreting this research. An explanation of this work is provided in Mrazek and Marcinkowski (1997) as chairs of the North American Commission in Environmental Education Research. Louise Chawla cited John Disinger’s note “that the scope of environmental education...