Environmental Education Discourse Research Articles

Restoring realism: themes and variations

In the critical tradition, environmental education discourse interrogates how knowledge constructs experience. But environmental education also emphasises perceiving, understanding and responding to “more-than-human” beings and processes. These two motivations are in tension. One problem is that the epistemological orientation driving the critique of knowledge seems to render access to something more-than-human a priori impossible. But environmental education squanders its promise and its dream if only ever permitted to talk about the natural world with scarequotes. Our field urgently needs to develop a realism robust against epistemologies that construct impassable barriers between humans and the rest of creation. I propose that this starts with radically reconceiving the nature and relationship between similarity and difference, interpreted in this article as the dynamic between theme and variations. Reworking Windelband’s distinction between idiographic and nomothetic research, I suggest that the relationship between theme and variation manifests a fundamental ontological pattern that pervades all things. “Theme and variation” proposes a unifying metaphysical duality in which the more-than-human reveals itself in how things suggest, conform to, modulate, and violate generalisation. Acknowledging and investigating this is part of restoring to other beings and processes their metaphysical, aesthetic, and ethical status, from the skies to the psyche.

Archipelagos of learning: environmental education on islands

SUMMARYThis article appreciatively reviews environmental education practice on islands through the lens of four key strands of environmental education discourse: biodiversity, conservation and science-framed education; place-based, indigenized and bioregional education; climate change and disaster risk reduction education; and education for sustainable development. Arising from these strands and their interface, six questions are asked of the examples of island practice reviewed. A final section asks what is distinctive about environmental education on islands and comes up with five principal findings. First, it is observed that environmental education initiatives on islands are markedly eclectic in their rich blending of practice from within the different strands. Second, it is noted that environmental education practice on different islands, especially in the Pacific, is marked by a return to indigenous, community-based learning. Third, the emergence of a distinctive pedagogy is remarked upon, especially the greater weighting given to relational, socio-affective and action-orientated learning. Fourth, the paucity of inter-island cosmopolitan dialogue is noted and questions are asked about how to ensure island learners steeped in learning about place can be brought to connect with the global environmental problematic. Fifth, the frequency of cross-curricular, interdisciplinary, even trans-disciplinary framing of environmental education initiatives is identified as bringing distinctiveness to island practice.

Ecotheology and VCE ‘religion and society’: a curriculum analysis

Responding to a ‘silence’ in the critical discourse of environmental education on the role of theology, this study is a Critical Discourse Analysis of the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) subject ‘Religion and Society’, offered to Year 11 and 12 secondary school students in the State of Victoria, Australia. This subject is analysed in terms of how it potentially constructs environmentally problematic assumptions, and its potential revision to foster greater contestation of such assumptions. An ecotheological conceptual framework was developed by distilling key concepts from a range of authors contributing to: an historical discourse concerning causes of the environmental crisis; the ecotheological discourse on links between theological understandings and nature, and; the critical discourse of environmental education. Over the past thirty years the critical discourse of environmental education facilitated an altered perspective in education on the earth’s ecological situation, from ‘environmental crisis’ to an ‘environmentally problematic human condition’. It identifies this condition as one where human identity is fragmented by the Scientific Paradigm. The ecotheological discourse characterises this condition as lack of self-love perpetuated by capitalist economic interests playing on deep archetypal forces within human identity. Environmentally problematic assumptions, then, are assumptions about self which are inherent in fragmented identity and lack of self-love. From an educational perspective, discipline and wisdom emerge as crucial concepts from the ecotheological discourse. When the critical discourse of environmental education is analysed in light of these, the notion of ‘disciplines of identity’ emerges – discipline of body, gender, culture, and narrative. New understandings of ‘interdisciplinarity’ emerge – conceptual relationships between these disciplines, and the work towards reconciliation between them, towards unifying identity. New understandings of ‘transdisciplinarity’ emerge – in this reconciliation the identity transcends its disciplines of body, gender, culture, and narrative. This reconciliation leads to intelligibility and accountability in individual identity and life narrative, which is transcended by resulting enhancing relationships with self, others, and nature. Self-knowledge, or wisdom, is necessarily developed in this process. Based on the application of the ecotheological framework, VCE ‘Religion and Society’ is found to construct environmentally problematic assumptions through the following interrelated characteristics: direct linkage to the bureaucratic selection process into the Victorian tertiary education system; likely emphasis on the economic imperative of maximising entry opportunities into this system, rather than on exploration of the ‘great questions of life’ for the sake of self-knowledge or wisdom; competitiveness, and emphasis on rational analysis rather than synthesis and creativity, in the exploration of the non-rational ‘great questions of life’. This study found that VCE ‘Religion and Society’ could be critically revised to foster greater contestation of environmentally problematic assumptions by: overtly facilitating student exploration of the ‘great questions of life’ in relation to their own identities and life narratives; emphasising and assessing depth of engagement, rather than ‘performance’, in this exploration; emphasising creative expression in relation to this exploration, and; structuring the curriculum around the disciplines of body, gender, culture, and narrative. More generally, this study contributes broader understandings to the critical discourse of environmental education, and to future transdisciplinary research efforts.

The connotations of botho philosophy and its potential contribution towards environmental conservation: the case of Tlokoeng community in Lesotho

This paper explores innovative environmental education strategies to conserve biodiversity in a rural-based context, in Lesotho. A case study approach was employed to investigate the community’s conception of botho philosophy and how it might promote nature conservation. Focus Group Interviews were conducted with 105 participants. The responses were analyzed to determine the community’s emerging definition and conception of botho. The findings indicate features of botho that parallel the ones that are found in the literature. In addition, botho was described metaphysically as a holistic spiritualised worldview that is concerned with a harmonious co-existence with others, nature and the Creator and empirically, in terms of moral attributes that foster co-existence within the socio-economic and natural systems. It is illustrated that botho can contribute towards environmental education discourse and nature conservation and thus diversify the pre-dominantly Euro-centric knowledge landscape in Lesotho.

Exploring the Role of Visitors’ Self-Identity in Marine Museum Learning

As research of self-identity, self-concept, and self-efficacy in the discourse of environmental education is scarce, this study attempted to explore the role of visitors’ self-identity in marine museum learning. With the use of on-site data collection, investigators of this study collected 144 completed questionnaire surveys from marine museum visitors. Seventeen of these visitors were randomly selected and agreed for an individual 30-minute follow-up interview to solicit their views of environmental awareness and responsibility. Results revealed that visitors who viewed themselves as explorer/facilitator (E&F) outperformed visitors who viewed themselves as experience seeker/recharger on self-concept and self-efficacy. In addition, E&F visitors tended to have a better understanding of conservation, sustainability, human–nature interaction, and science communication. All visitors did possess similar levels of interest and enjoyment during their museum visit. The above results provide insights into the important role of self-identity in the learning outcomes of self-concept, self-efficacy, and environmental awareness and responsibility among museum visitors.

Seeing the Trees and the Forest: Attending to Australian Natural History as if it Mattered

Discourse in the Australian Journal of Environmental Education of the last ten years has not addressed a pedagogy that draws on and reflects the natural history of the continent. Australia is an ecological and species diverse country that has experienced substantial environmental change as a consequence of European settlement. Australians have historically been, and increasingly are, urban people. With high rates of urban residency in a substantially modified landscape, what role might environmental education play in assisting Australians to develop understandings of the natural history of specific Australian places? While Australia has a rich history of people observing, comparing and recording the natural history of the continent, environmental education discourse in this journal has not addressed how pedagogy might be informed by a focus on natural history. This paper draws attention to this gap in Australian environmental education discourse and offers some thoughts and ideas for a pedagogy based on the natural history of specific places.

Socio-Scientific Issues in Education: Innovative Practices and Contending Epistemologies

In the past decade, we have seen the well-established discourse of environmental education (EE) supplanted by that of education for sustainability (EfS). In some ways this change in terminology has been no more than a slogan change, with the actual educational practices associated with EfS little changed from those qualified by EE (Campbell and Robottom 2008). Environment-related education activities under both terms frequently focus on socio-scientific issues – which serve as the chief organising principle for a range of related curriculum activities – and are shaped by the particular characteristics of these issues. Socio-scientific issues are essentially constituted of questions that are philosophical as well as empirical in nature. Socio-scientific issues consist in contests among dissenting social, economic and environmental perspectives that rarely all align, giving rise to debates whose resolution is not amenable to solely scientific approaches. Socio-scientific issues, then, exist at the intersection of differing human interests, values and motivations and are therefore necessarily socially-constructed. An adequate educational exploration of these issues requires a recognition of their constructedness within particular communities of interest and of the limitation of purely applied science perspectives, and, in turn, requires the adoption of curricular and pedagogical approaches that are in fundamental ways informed by constructivist educational assumptions – at least to the extent that community constructions of socio-scientific issues are recognised as being shaped by human interests and social and environmental context. This article considers these matters within the context of examples of environment-related practice drawn from two geographical regions. The article will argue that a serious scientific element is both necessary and insufficient for a rigorous educational exploration of socio-scientific issues within either the EE or EfS discourses, and will consider some implications for professional development and research in this field.

Reflecting on Environmental Education: Where Is Our Place in the Green Movement?

Recently the environmental movement has seen much success and progress under a newly-framed green paradigm. Yet, despite the proliferation of national attention to, and public interest in, the go-green mentality, environmental education still seems to be stuck within the old environmental paradigm. This critical essay shares lessons that environmental education can learn through incorporating a human benefits approach. Ultimately, this essay calls for a reflection on environmental education's presence within the budding sustainability movement and calls for the “humanization” of environmental education discourse and pedagogical practice.

Language and meaning in environmental education: an overview

The devotion of this special issue of EER to the language of environmental and sustainable developmental education (SDE) serves as a timely reminder that SDE cannot simply be seen as a culturally neutral or value‐free package that can be ‘delivered’. In a variety of ways, contributors to this volume address the issues involved in re‐engineering the discourse of environmental education, and education more broadly, towards an overriding concern with sustainable development. These various approaches assume certain epistemological positions, particularly in relation to language and referent meaning. This article sketches out a possible typology of such positions, and attempts to locate other contributions to this issue, using this framework.

Seeing the Trees and the Forest: Attending to Australian Natural History as if it Mattered

AbstractDiscourse in the Australian Journal of Environmental Education of the last ten years has not addressed a pedagogy that draws on and reflects the natural history of the continent. Australia is an ecological and species diverse country that has experienced substantial environmental change as a consequence of European settlement. Australians have historically been, and increasingly are, urban people. With high rates of urban residency in a substantially modified landscape, what role might environmental education play in assisting Australians to develop understandings of the natural history of specific Australian places? While Australia has a rich history of people observing, comparing and recording the natural history of the continent, environmental education discourse in this journal has not addressed how pedagogy might be informed by a focus on natural history. This paper draws attention to this gap in Australian environmental education discourse and offers some thoughts and ideas for a pedagogy based on the natural history of specific places.

Community-Based Sustainability: Conservation in the Ballarat Region

AbstractThe discourse of sustainability is promoted internationally, with the United Nations declaring 2005-2014 as a Decade for Education for Sustainable Development. There is discussion concerning the nature, status and significance of Education for Sustainability and its relationship with the somewhat established discourse of environmental education. This debate requires continuing theorising and one approach is to reflect critically on specific examples of sustainability within specific communities. This article seeks to promote further discussion about sustainability, and to contribute to ongoing theorisation about Education for Sustainability, by considering a particular instance – that of environmental sustainability in the Ballarat region of Victoria. The case study suggests that implementation of this local environmental sustainability strategy was dominated by technocratic and individualistic ideologies.

An Analysis of the Discursive Production of Environmental Education: terrorism, archaism and transcendentalism

In this paper the author analyses the emergence of environmental education discourse from a Foucauldian perspective. The aim is to make evident the discursive play where environmental education bec...

Ontology and the Critical Discourse of Environmental Education

There has been a major effort in Australian academic circles over the past fifteen years to develop a critical discourse in environmental education curriculum, pedagogy, history, and research (Henry et al 1981, Di Chiro 1987, Gough 1987, 1994, Robottom 1987, Greenall 1987, Fien 1993 a,b, Greenall Gough 1993, Robottom & Hart 1993). This discourse is critical of ‘mainstream’ approaches to environmental education that are alleged to be positivist, behaviourist, masculinist, and instrumentalist. Internationally, environmental educators have also considered various shortcomings of environmental education. There is general concern about unrealised aspirations, unrealistic expectations, definitional problems, values issues, conceptual obfuscation and questionable research endeavours (Brennan 1979, Disinger 1979, 1985, Williams 1979, Baer 1980, 1981, 1985, Knapp 1983, Roth 1988, Iozzi 1989 a,b, Gigliotti 1990, Marcinkowski 1990, Wals, Beringer & Stapp 1990, Ham & Sewing 1992, Leming 1992, Pinar & Bowers 1992, Ramsey, Hungerford & Volk 1992). Consequently, it can be asserted there are practical deficiencies of a moral, social, political, and ecological nature. If so, one conclusion about the development of the field of environmental education is that it is problematic and often contradictory.