‘Why am I involved in environmental education?’ Using narrative inquiry to explore the identity and practice of teachers committed to environmental education

Abstract

Based on self-reflective narratives, our study focuses on the lived experience of four Greek primary school teachers who are acknowledged for their personal commitment to environmental education. Their experience was narratively explored through recurrent conversations with them to bring out aspects of their identity and practice. The study was based on Connelly & Clandinin’s ontological and epistemological tenets of Narrative Inquiry, which we adopted as our approach and methodology to look into the teachers’ reflections on ‘why they became involved in environmental education’. We discuss how engaging teachers in generative reflective processes contributes to gaining insights to environmental education ‘from within’ and ‘bottom up’, while allowing us to re-think and re-imagine research in the field. We argue that research can thus act as a means of supporting learning for sustainability in terms of the personal and professional development and empowerment of teachers.