Justin Dillon

Reconceptualizing the teaching of controversial issues

Science has a role to play in the resolution of many of the issues deemed controversial in all societies. However, evidence of a lack of public confidence in science and scientists as effective problem‐solvers continues to accumulate. This paper speculates that this lack of confidence might in part be due to the way in which science educators present controversial issues. In particular, we argue that current approaches to teaching about controversy do not sufficiently acknowledge the nature of the issues themselves. The paper proposes a set of principles as the basis for a reconceptualization of the teaching of controversial issues and gives an example of how they might be applied.

Science Aspirations, Capital, and Family Habitus: How Families Shape Children’s Engagement and Identification With Science

Low participation rates in the study of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) post-16 are a matter of international concern. Existing evidence suggests children’s science aspirations are largely formed within the critical 10 to 14 age period. This article reports on survey data from over 9,000 elementary school children in England (age 10/11) and qualitative data from 160 semi-structured interviews (92 children aged 10/11 and 78 parents), collected as part of an ongoing 5-year longitudinal study in the United Kingdom tracking children from 10 to 14. Drawing on the conceptual framework of Bourdieu, the article explores how the interplay of family habitus and capital can make science aspirations more “thinkable” for some (notably middle-class) children than others. It is argued that while family habitus is not deterministic (there is no straightforward alignment between family habitus, capital, and a child’s science aspirations), social inequalities in the distribution of capital and differentially classed family habitus combine to produce uneven (classed, racialized) patterns in children’s science aspirations and potential future participation.

Convergence Between Science and Environmental Education

Citizen science and concerns about sustainability can catalyze much-needed synergy between environmental education and science education. Urgent issues such as climate change, food scarcity, malnutrition, and loss of biodiversity are highly complex and contested in both science and society (1). To address them, environmental educators and science educators seek to engage people in what are commonly referred to as sustainability challenges. Regrettably, science education (SE), which focuses primarily on teaching knowledge and skills, and environmental education (EE), which also stresses the incorporation of values and changing behaviors, have become increasingly distant. The relationship between SE and EE has been characterized as “distant, competitive, predatorprey and host-parasite” (2). We examine the potential for a convergence of EE and SE that might engage people in addressing fundamental socioecological challenges.

On learners and learning in environmental education: Missing theories, ignored communities

This response to Rickinsons (2001) review of empirical studies of learners and learning in school environmental education makes the points that Rickinson is only partially successful in achieving what he sets out to do, and that other, major shortcomings in environmental education theory and research have still to be addressed. Two major criticisms of the review are made: learning theories underlying the empirical research are not examined, and a large body of relevant work in so-called informal education is ignored.

‘Not girly, not sexy, not glamorous’: primary school girls’ and parents’ constructions of science aspirations 1

Internationally, there is widespread concern about the need to increase participation in the sciences (particularly the physical sciences), especially among girls/women. This paper draws on data from a five-year, longitudinal study of 10–14-year-old children’s science aspirations and career choice to explore the reasons why, even from a young age, many girls may see science aspirations as ‘not for me’. We discuss data from phase one – a survey of over 9000 primary school children (aged 10/11) and interviews with 92 children and 78 parents, focusing in particular on those girls who did not hold science aspirations. Using a feminist poststructuralist analytic lens, we argue that science aspirations are largely ‘unthinkable’ for these girls because they do not fit with either their constructions of desirable/intelligible femininity nor with their sense of themselves as learners/students. We argue that an underpinning construction of science careers as ‘clever’/‘brainy’, ‘not nurturing’ and ‘geeky’ sits in opposition to the girls’ self-identifications as ‘normal’, ‘girly’, ‘caring’ and ‘active’. Moreover, we suggest that this lack of fit is exacerbated by social inequalities, which render science aspirations potentially less thinkable for working-class girls in particular. The paper concludes with a discussion of potential implications for increasing women’s greater participation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).

Perspectives on environmental education-related research in science education

As with the previous special edition on this topic (Volume 15, Issue 5, 1993), contributions have been drawn from across the world and from a range of perspectives. This introduction identifies key issues in the papers and comments on the critical issues that characterize the interfaces between science education and environmental education at the turn of the century. In particular, three key questions about future directions for environmental education can be identified from the titles of the papers: ‘What might learning look like?’; ‘What might teaching look like?’, and ‘What might the curriculum look like?’ Such questions might form research agendas as well as acting as a taxonomy of some current thinking.

International Handbook of Research on Environmental Education

The environment and contested notions of sustainability are increasingly topics of public interest, political debate, and legislation across the world. Environmental education journals now publish research from a wide variety of methodological traditions that show linkages between the environment, health, development, and education. This growth in scholarship makes this an opportune time to review and consolidate the knowledge base of the environmental education (EE) field. The purpose of this 51-chapter handbook is not only to illuminate the most important concepts, findings and theories that have been developed by EE research, but also to critically examine the historical progression of the field, its current debates and controversies, what is still missing from the EE research agenda, and where that agenda might be headed.

Identity and Culture: theorising emergent environmentalism

Summary This article critically examines the methodology and findings of the emergent environmentalism research project as reported in Environmental Education Research (EER), 4(4). We challenge both the ontological stance implicit in the research as well as its explicit epistemology. We argue for a wider theoretical underpinning to the research and specifically advocate the use of identity theories to explain personal and social phenomena. We also argue for the use of theoretical frameworks that empower rather than ‘capture’ cultural groups.

On the dangers of blurring methods, methodologies and ideologies in environmental education research

When deciding what to cook, there are certain questions to be borne in mind including: who the meal is for; what food is available; and what cooking utensils and equipment one has. Other, more individual factors, include personal tastes, diet and philosophies. As a vegetarian, for example, Justin is not going to be cooking meat; Arjen who does occasionally eat meat, might. One of us likes spicy food, the other does not. Likewise, as people over the age of 40 ‘watching our weight’, we both try to avoid consuming too many ‘calories’. So, our end product, the meal, depends on a range of factors over which we have no control (what’s available); a range of factors over which we have some control (depending on our personal choice); and a range of beliefs and preferences that reduce our choices. Usually research is more complicated but, in essence, this analogy serves to remind us that the final product—the substance of our conclusions—also depends on factors over which we have no control, factors over which we have some control, and a range of beliefs and preferences that reduce our choices in designing, conducting and reporting research. What people think of our meal/research conclusions depends largely on them and their preferences and persuasions: there’s nothing intrinsic to either the cooking/research process that guarantees what someone will think about its end product in terms of quality, suitability, choices or compromises. In this contribution, we would like to caution against blurring methods, methodologies and ideologies in research. We do this by drawing on two earlier articles in Environmental Education Research that focused on this issue as well but from quite different vantage points: Hart’s (2000) paper in which he problematizes the generating of generic guidelines for designing and judging different strands of research, and

Issues in case‐study methodology in investigating environmental and sustainability issues in higher education: towards a problem‐based approach?

Case studies are put to a variety of uses in investigating environmental and sustainability issues in higher education. These uses include: to document, describe (in detail), contextualize, investigate and/or explain information that characterizes and qualifies what is of interest in this area. The focus of the case study is often an event, a situation, a setting, a problem, an issue, a theory, a model, a unit, an entity ... i.e. some ‘thing’ in a bounded context that represents the case in question. In this paper, we argue that the definition of the case is a strongly analytical, data-selective choice, and that case-study methodology risks misinterpretation and superficiality amongst case-study producers and readers if assumptions and positionings regarding the epistemological and ontological dimensions of the case under study are not appraised and attended to.