Noel Gough

RhizomANTically Becoming‐Cyborg: Performing posthuman pedagogies

© 2004 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA Blackwell Publishing, Ltd. Oxford, UK EPAT ducational Philosophy and Theory 0013-1857 2 04 Phi osop y of Education S ciety of Australasia 36riginal Article RhizomANTical y Becomi g-Cyb rg: Performing posthuman pedagogies Noel Gough RhizomANTically Becoming-Cyborg: Performing posthuman pedagogies

Environmental education, narrative complexity and postmodern science/fiction

In this paper science education and environmental education are considered as story‐telling practices and the narrative strategies used by educators in these fields to represent and problematize human transactions with the phenomenal world are critically examined. It is argued that the characteristic discourses of much contemporary science and environmental education rarely encompass the narrative complexities that are needed in order to (i) make problems of human interrelationships with environments intelligible (and, thus, amenable to resolution) and (ii) conceptualize postmodern scientific understandings of ‘nature’ and ‘reality’. It is suggested that these problems and concepts are modelled more appropriately‐and interrogated more critically‐by much literary fiction, especially the complex and complicating textual strategies of postmodern science fiction. I thus argue that critical readings of science fiction texts should be integral to both science and environmental education and that the narrative s...

Rethinking the Subject: (De)constructing Human Agency in Environmental Education Research.

SUMMARY In this article I critically analyse some of the ways in which human subjectivity and agency are constructed in contemporary discourses of environmental education research, with particular reference to conceptual change discourses such as those borrowed from ‘misconceptions’ research in science education. I argue that the methods of constructivist science education research are not necessarily applicable to either the (human) ‘subjects’ or subject‐matters (in an epistemological sense) of environmental education, and that poststructuralist methodologies may provide useful frames for rethinking the ways in which understandings of human subjectivity and agency are deployed in environmental education research.

Surpassing Our Own Histories: autobiographical methods for environmental education research

Summary In this article I appraise selected examples of the research on significant life experiences reported and discussed in a recent special issue of this journal by comparing the ways in which these studies use (and justify the use of) retrospective accounts of experience with autobiographical approaches to curriculum inquiry that have been informed by phenomenology and hermeneutics. I argue that the conservative and socially reproductive logic of significant life experiences research invites environmental educators to repeat rather than to improve upon their own histories and that, if we are to use autobiographical methods in environmental education research, we should try to do so in a way that generates new possibilities for educational experience, rather than merely replicates the experiences of a previous generation.

Environmental education research in southern Africa: dilemmas of interpretation

These multiple framings of our reflections on environmental education research in southern Africa are written as dilemmas of interpretation that aim to disrupt any temptation to generalise or essentialise its qualities and characteristics. Recognising that research is a textual practice, we use J. M. Coetzees portrayal of the dilemmas faced by African novelists as a point of departure in reflecting on the changing landscape of environmental education research in southern Africa as we have experienced it over six years. We provide readings framed by reference to post-colonialism, changing epistemologies and methodologies, contexts of transformation and tension, the influence of international organisations such as the United Nations and its instrumentalities, and concerns about human rights and accountability. We conclude by affirming the post-colonialist trajectories of environmental education research in southern Africa and speculating on the distinctive possibilities that recovering ubuntu (an ethic of sharing and hospitality) might offer to researchers in this region.

Interrogating Silence: Environmental Education Research as Postcolonialist Textwork

n December 1997 I was privileged––and very pleasantlysurprised––to receive the inaugural Allen Strom EurekaPrize for Environmental Education for ‘environmentaleducation research of a substantive nature which contributesto professional thinking and practice’. According to theprogram for the prize-giving ceremony, I was awarded theprize ‘for research on recent cultural and philosophicalmovements, such as postmodernism, which has translated andapplied complex social theories to theory and practice inenvironmental education’.I want to take this opportunity to repeat my thanks to the NewSouth Wales Environment Protection Authority for theirgenerous sponsorship of this prize. I offer these thanks notonly as an individual recipient but also on behalf of the widerAustralian environmental education community. I seeparticular significance in the Allen Strom Eureka Prize forEnvironmental Education being awarded in a suite thatincludes separate prizes for environmental research andenvironmental journalism. This helps to distinguish our fieldfrom other disciplines with which it is sometimes confused.My own research emphasises that environmental educationis not just another type of environmental study but more aform of cultural and media literacy.Geoff Young and his colleagues at the NSW EPA must alsobe congratulated for seizing the opportunity to honor AllenStrom’s life and work by establishing a Eureka Prize in hisname. I was fortunate enough to be at the ceremony at theUniversity of Sydney in 1984 when Allen was made anHonorary Life Fellow of the Australian Association forEnvironmental Education and I also have good reason to recallhis contributions to the earliest issues of AAEE’s Newsletter(indeed, my own first contribution to the Newsletter, in issue3, October 1980, was a letter in which I emphatically disagreedwith the views on whaling he expressed in issue 2, July 1980;we agreed on the value of healthy and vigorous debate).The remainder of this essay serves two purposes. First, Iprovide a brief account of the research for which the 1997Eureka Prize was awarded. I do this not as an exercise in self-advertising or self-aggrandisement but as one way ofdemonstrating my accountabilty to the people andorganisations that sponsor and support the prize. As GeoffYoung writes in his introduction to this special section: ‘Byholding the winning and commended instances ofenvironmental education research and programs up for wideattention and public scrutiny, the Allen Strom Eureka Prizeraises key questions of vital interest to all who have an interestin sustainable futures, not simply those futures that areexplicitly environmental’.My second purpose is to offer some end-of-millenniumthoughts on prospects for environmental education (membersof the editorial team and selected Life Fellows of AAEE wereinvited to contribute such thoughts to another special sectionof this issue). The Eureka Prize has provided opportunitiesfor me to pursue some relatively new lines of inquiry andhere I will focus in particular on the implications forenvironmental education of postcolonialist and antiracistapproaches to research.

Textual Authority in Bram Stoker's Dracula; or, What's Really at Stake in Action Research?

ABSTRACT In a previous issue of Educational Action Research, Jean‐Claude Couture revisited his involvement in a university action research project with particular reference to his complicity in – and, eventually, resistance to – working for the interests of the university. In his essay, entitled ‘Dracula as action researcher’. Couture uses the 1992 movie, Bram Stokers Dracula, as a source of metaphors and analogies for rewriting the story of his involvement in the project. In this response to Couture. I suggest that the movie offers fewer textual resources for the deconstruction he attempts than does Bram Stokers original novel and, more importantly, that Couture may have thus overlooked important resources for resisting his positioning as an accomplice of the university. I also suggest that juxtaposing Coutures story of action research with Bram Stokers version of the Dracula legend highlights crucial questions about the mobilisation of textual authority in educational action research.

Sustainable development in learning, leadership and the law : a review essay.

This review essay offers a critique of the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development through an appraisal of three recent texts. These texts explore issues of sustainability and sustainable development in the context of three different (but interrelated) discourses-practices, namely, (lifelong) learning, (educational) leadership and (environmental) law. The texts reviewed are: Halsey, Mark. (2006). Deleuze and Environmental Damage: Violence of the Text. Aldershot: Ashgate. Hargreaves, Andy, and Fink, Dean. (2006). Sustainable Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Scott, William A. H., & Gough, Stephen R. (2004). Sustainable Development and Learning: Framing the Issues. London and New York: RoutledgeFalmer.

Rethinking globalisation : a book review and a reflection on two weeks in september 2001

When I first read Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson’s (2002) intriguing collection of resources, Rethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World, I anticipated writing a short and enthusiastic review in which I would recommend it unreservedly to the attention of anyone involved in social and environmental education. But when I put my hands to the keyboard, I realised that I wanted to say more about why critical appraisals of globalisation are so important at this moment in world history and, thus, why this book’s significance lies as much in what it stands for as its actual contents.