Robert B. Stevenson

Schooling and environmental/sustainability education: from discourses of policy and practice to discourses of professional learning

The gap between policy rhetoric and school practices in environmental education has not only persisted but probably increased over the past twenty years, given the contested advent of education for sustainable development (ESD) as the dominant international policy discourse in this area, and an increased focus in schools on didactic teaching in traditional content areas resulting from narrowly defined accountability measures in many national educational policies. After examining changes and continuities in the discourse of environmental education/ESD and the policy contexts of schools over the past twenty years, this article argues for re‐conceptualising the rhetoric–practice gap such that practices in schools are not simply assessed in relation to policy discourse but policy discourse itself is re‐examined in relation to teachers’ practical theories and the contexts shaping their practices. Although the structures and norms of schooling continue to work against inquiry‐based action‐oriented environmental education practices, several emerging trends are identified that can offer promising spaces or opportunities. Drawing on what we know about the power of professional communities to contribute to teacher learning, the article concludes with a call for constructing discourses of professional learning that reflexively build, sustain and develop such spaces and opportunities for enacting meaningful environmental education in schools. Such a discourse and approach, it is argued, can move the focus from educators’ implementation of environmental education (as expressed in the policy discourse) to building their normative and technical capacity, both individually and collectively, to shape practice.

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.

Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory for modelling community resilience to natural disasters

This paper advocates the use of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory as a framework to analyse resilience at diverse scales. Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory can be employed to (a) benchmark social resilience, (b) target the priority interventions required and (c) measure progress arising from these interventions to enhance resilience to natural disasters. First, the paper explores resilience to natural disasters in the context of climatic change as building resilience is seen as a way to mitigate impacts of natural disasters. Second, concepts of resilience are systematically examined and documented, outlining resilience as a trait and resilience as a process. Third, issues arising in relation to the measurement of resilience are discussed. Fourth, Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory is described and proffered to model and assess resilience at different scales. Fifth, studies are described which have supported the use of the bioecological systems theory for the study of resilience. Sixth, an example of the use of Bronfenbrenner’s theory is offered and the paper concludes with suggestions for future research using Bronfenbrenner’s theory.

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.

A critical pedagogy of place and the critical place(s) of pedagogy

The notion of place‐based education as grounding student learning in the local raises important questions about what constitutes the ‘local’ in a now closely interconnected world and what constitutes an educational ‘place’ when places of learning are shifting, as both new virtual sites emerge and old physical ones, including schools, lose some of their significance. In response to Gruenewald’s proposal to blend place‐based education with critical pedagogy as traditions whose respective emphasis complements the other’s limitations, I identify some tensions and remaining limitations but disagree with Bowers’ critique that a critical pedagogy of place is an oxymoron. Instead, I argue that these two traditions can be productively juxtaposed whereby their junctures and disjunctures can be revealed and used as a pedagogical space for authentic environmental and cultural learning by engaging students in constructing thick descriptions (as Bowers advocates) and critical analyses, both historically and contemporaneously, of the places they inhabit.

Shared decision making and core school values: a case study of organizational learning

This case study suggests that second‐order changes in structures and relationships do not necessarily result in second‐order changes in teaching and learning. Processes and norms that serve to govern discourse and behavior in relation to other kinds of school issues cannot be assumed to come into play when complex issues concerning curriculum and teaching are encountered. The potential of organizational learning for contributing to the improvement of teaching and learning in schools remains promising but elusive. The groundbreaking work of Argyris needs to be extended through concerted research in school settings.

The Distinctive Characteristics of Environmental Education Research in Australia: An Historical and Comparative Analysis

This paper addresses the question of how Australian environmental education (EE) research was conceptualised and contextualised in the decade of the 1990s. Sixty seven articles published by Australian authors in this journal from 1990-2000 were analysed to examine the conceptualisation of this research using an inductive emergent categorisation approach and a five frames model (Reid, in press) of key arguments and debates in the field. Contextualisation was explored in relation to specialist areas, scale and environmental dimensions of focus. A search for a coherent and distinct meaning of of this research was explored by making comparisons with international environmental education research during a similar time period that was the subject of two reviews. These analyses revealed that Australian environmental education research can be characterised as questioning and challenging prevailing (at the time) environmental education orthodoxies by critiquing and theorising the conceptual and curriculum framing of environmental education, most commonly from a socially critical and global perspective. Specialist areas and educational sectors that received little attention are also discussed.

Dropping Out in a Working Class High School: adolescent voices on the decision to leave

Abstract Although many high school drop‐outs share a history of academic failure and truancy behaviour, their underlying reasons for leaving school are far more complex, and involve a web of both personal and school‐related problems. Interviews with drop‐outs from a working class high school in the USA revealed how the schools response, or lack of response, to their problems compounds their difficulties and creates a tension over the source of blame for their failure. On the one hand, these adolescents criticised the school for its failings, but on the other hand, they attributed much of their failure to themselves. In resolving this issue of blame, these suburban white drop‐outs, in contrast to inner‐city minority youth, indicated that, ultimately, they themselves must be at fault for failing to conform to the expectations and demands of school. An explanation for this difference is offered by contrasting their lack of collective identity with the racial consciousness of African American drop‐outs.

Sense of Place in Australian Environmental Education Research: Distinctive, Missing or Displaced?

Many environmental educators were motivated to enter the field by a concern for the loss of places to which they felt a strong sense of attachment and belonging. This raises the question of whether a sense of place, or attachment to the Australian biophysical or cultural landscape, has shaped Australian environmental education research. An analysis was conducted of articles by Australian authors published in the AJEE in the period from 1990-2000, a time that preceded the (re)emergence of attention to place-based education in academic circles. Only four of 67 articles addressed the authors or other Australians sense of place. Several explanations for this finding are examined, drawing on some of the environmental psychology literature on place identity as well as the notion that sense of place involves multiple interrelated personal, cultural and professional identities. Finally, an argument is made as to why place attachments are important to environmental education research.

Critically Reflective Inquiry and Administrator Preparation: Problems and Possibilities.

The Holmes Groups concept of professional development schools challenges conventional assumptions about how practitioners acquire knowledge of educational practice and how theory and practice are related. This article examines these different assumptions and their implications for administrator preparation in professional development schools by analyzing case studies of a problem-based administrative seminar and inquiry-oriented teacher education programs. To address the dilemmas revealed by the case studies in integrating theory and practice and reconceptualizing roles and relationships, the article discusses conditions for fostering collaborative inquiries into problems of practice by student administrators, university faculty, and cooperating school administrators.