Marcia McKenzie

How Are Adventure Education Program Outcomes Achieved?: A Review of the Literature

This article provides an overview of the existing literature on how program outcomes are achieved. It is divided into categories of program characteristics that the literature suggests contribute to program outcomes, including: the physical environment, activities, processing, the group, instructors, and the participant. Outcomes referred to throughout the article are those generally associated with adventure education programs, such as increases in participants’ self-concepts and interpersonal skills. The reviewed literature indicates that the current understanding of how adventure education program outcomes are achieved is based largely on theory, rather than on empirical research. Further research could provide adventure educators with a better understanding of why programs work and enable them to tailor programs to increase their effectiveness. Before quantitative methods can become useful in an examination of how outcomes are achieved, it seems necessary to use qualitative methods to inductively discover all the program characteristics that are possibly affecting the outcomes experienced by participants.

Land education: Indigenous, post-colonial, and decolonizing perspectives on place and environmental education research

This editorial introduces a special issue of Environmental Education Research titled ‘Land education: Indigenous, post-colonial, and decolonizing perspectives on place and environmental education research.’ The editorial begins with an overview of each of the nine articles in the issue and their contributions to land and environmental education, before outlining features of land education in more detail. ‘Key considerations’ of land education are discussed, including: Land and settler colonialism, Land and Indigenous cosmologies, Land and Indigenous agency and resistance, and The significance of naming. The editorial engages the question ‘Why land education?’ by drawing distinctions between land education and current forms of place-based education. It closes with a discussion of modes and methods of land education research.

The places of pedagogy: or, what we can do with culture through intersubjective experiences

Beginning by highlighting considerations of the intersections among social and ecological issues and the recent diversification of critical pedagogy, this paper suggests means by which approaches such as Gruenewald’s (2003) “critical pedagogy of place” can be expanded to accommodate a broader range of possible places of pedagogy. The paper is centrally concerned with what happens when we consider socio‐ecological learning, not as occuring via cognitive critique or embodied place‐based experience, but rather as taking place in between the thought and the sensed via a range of intersubjective experiences. It suggests that these intersubjective locations that comprise the “where” of the learning of the student can be particular physical places, but can also be in and of experiences of friendship, art, literature, irony, cultural difference, community. By expanding our possible repertoire of “pedagogical arts,” or the range of intersubjective places and spaces of pedagogy engaged, we are able to conceptualise and practise education in ways that enable a deeper connection to place but also opportunities for other modes and outcomes of student learning. In particular, the paper outlines the possibilities for learning and cultural formation enabled by spaces of collective youth engagement.

Education policy mobility: reimagining sustainability in neoliberal times

This paper is concerned with the twinning of sustainability with priorities of economic neoliberalization in education, and in particular via the mobility or diffusion of education policy. We discuss the literature on policy mobility as well as overview concerns regarding neoliberalism and education. The paper brings these analyses to bear in considering the uptake of sustainability in education policy. We ask to what extent sustainability as a vehicular idea may be twinning with processes of neoliberalization in education policy in ways that may undermine aspirations of, and action on, environmental sustainability. Toward the end of the paper, we draw on data from an empirical study to help elucidate how the analytic frames of policy mobility can inform our analyses of the potential concerns and possibilities of sustainability as a vehicular idea. In particular, we investigate how sustainability and related language have been adopted in the policies of Canadian post-secondary education institutions over time. The paper closes by suggesting the potential implications of the proceeding analyses for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers concerned with sustainability in education policy.

Three Portraits of Resistance: The (Un)Making of Canadian Students.

In this article I have outlined several modes of resistance to popular media and dominant cultural narratives suggested in three Canadian educational programs with a focus on social and environmental change. Exploring discourses of awareness, inactive caring, thinking differently, lifestyle activism, impacting the world, and contingent agency, I propose that program characteristics and issues of class may affect students’ abilities to (un)make themselves as media consumers and producers—as ethical and political global citizens. Key words: social justice and education, environmental education, global education, discourse analysis, agency L’auteure presente plusieurs modes de resistance aux medias populaires et aux discours culturels dominants ressortant de trois programmes scolaires canadiens portant sur les changements sociaux et environnementaux en insistant sur l’evolution de la societe et du milieu environnant. Explorant les discours axes sur la conscientisation, la bienveillance passive, la pensee distincte et autonome, l’activisme quant au mode de vie, l’impact sur le monde et l’intervention conditionnelle, l’auteure fait valoir que des caracteristiques des programmes et des questions de classe peuvent avoir une incidence sur l’aptitude des eleves a devenir ou non des consommateurs de medias et des producteurs – en tant que citoyens ethiques et politiques dans le village planetaire. Mots cles : justice sociale et education en matiere d’environnement, education planetaire, analyse de discours, intervention

The ‘post‐post period’ and environmental education research

Described as ‘postexperimental’ and of the ‘post‐post period,’ the current moment in social science research is typified by multivoiced texts, researcher reflexivity, cultural criticism, and experimental works; characteristics in keeping with poststructurally informed understandings of social science research as contingent, evolving and messy. However, many researchers concerned with environmental education continue within positivistic or postpositivistic traditions, relying on understandings of reality as something that is out there to be discovered or approximated. This article explores the methodological considerations of post‐informed research, seeking to contribute to discussions of how environmental education research might better take issues of representation, legitimation, and politics into account.

Relational Validity and the “Where” of Inquiry Place and Land in Qualitative Research

This article reviews discussions of place in qualitative research that have appeared in Qualitative Inquiry over the past 20 years to foreground a conceptualization of critical place inquiry. The article describes relational validity and emphasizes possibilities for engaging place more meaningfully in qualitative inquiry.

Campus Sustainability Governance in Canada: A Content Analysis of Post-Secondary Institutions' Sustainability Policies.

Purpose – This paper aims to provide an overview of a content analysis of sustainability policies from Canadian post-secondary education institutions. The paper reports findings on the orientations to sustainability evident in the policies; references to other policies within the documents; and other key themes on how sustainability is engaged in the policies in relation to overall governance, education, operations, research and community outreach. Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 50 Canadian colleges and universities was selected based on representativeness across a range of criteria. A qualitative thematic content analysis of these policies was conducted using a collaborative coding approach. Findings – Results suggest that most sustainability policies described a Brundtland (i.e. intergenerational) and/or three-pillar (e.g. economic, environmental and social) orientation to sustainability. Many sustainability policies also connected to other external municipal or provincial policies. In terms ...

Environmental and sustainability education policy research: a systematic review of methodological and thematic trends

This paper reports on a systematic literature review of policy research in the area of environmental and sustainability education. We analyzed 215 research articles, spanning four decades and representing 71 countries, and which engaged a range of methodologies. Our analysis combines quantification of geographic and methodological trends with qualitative analysis of content-based themes. Significant findings included temporal spikes in published policy research occurring in the mid-1970s, late 1990s, and after 2005, as well as geographic under-representation of Africa, South and Central America, Eastern Europe, and North and West Asia. The majority of articles reviewed were non-empirical; empirical articles overwhelmingly focused on teaching and learning directives, rather than exploring the complexity of policy development or enactment. We conclude our analysis by describing key research gaps as highlighted by the review and propose directions for moving forward policy research in environmental and sustainability education. In particular, we suggest greater research attention to critical policy theory and methodology, issues of intersectionality, and climate change education policy research. By outlining in greater detail the policy research that has been undertaken to date, the review provides a platform for a broadened diversity of policy studies in environmental and sustainability education.

Scholarship as intervention: critique, collaboration and the research imagination

Following Scott (this issue), this paper examines how environmental education researchers might intervene to greater effect in the policies and practices of our governments and local and international organizations through individual and collective programmes of research. Suggesting that public scholarship or academic activism can engage a wide spectrum of genres and outcomes of research activity, the paper proposes that what stands out are not the methods employed in seeking to have research ‘be of use’, but instead what can be termed modes of engagement. These can be described as including interpretive critique or ‘speaking truth to power’, public space and collaboration, and the role of research imagination in social life. These three modes are discussed with the hope that researchers will consider their possibilities and implications in working towards more powerful public scholarship in environmental education.