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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2012

Robert B. Stevenson  and
Neus (Snowy) Evans
Robert B. Stevenson*
Affiliation:
James Cook University
Neus (Snowy) Evans
Affiliation:
James Cook University
*
†Address for correspondence: Professor Bob Stevenson, The Cairns Institute and School of Education, James Cook University, PO Box 6811, Cairns, Queensland 4870, Australia. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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.

Keywords

environmental education researchreviewing researchconceptualising researchcontextualising researchAustralian-international research comparisons
Type
Feature Articles
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 27 , Issue 1: Special Issue: The “ness” of Environmental Education , 2011 , pp. 24 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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