This article reports on experiences gained in two postgraduate programs in environmental education—one at the University of Canberra and one at Deakin University. The paper draws from the work of several postgraduate students who are exploring environmental issues in their communities as part of their postgraduate studies. The paper addresses some issues associated with community-based environmental education, including:

• research as participation in the critical appraisal of environmental situations

• the need for the research to be responsive to the needs and interests of the community

• the role of the researcher as change agent.

The article concludes that community-based environmental education research is a powerful learning experience for postgraduate students who are at the forefront of the research process and communicating directly with the community.

As a matter of survival, we need to educate current and future generations to live sustainably. We need to ensure that future generations have access to quality environmental education.

This paper provides guidelines for educators and managers to use to better understand and manage the learning environment in which environmental education, particularly sustainability, programs take place. This is done through the introduction of two tools. Firstly, through a model of the learning environment that can be used to understand the educational environment and its various interactions and secondly, through the introduction of an Adaptive Management Conceptual Framework. This framework provides a step by step approach to guide the process of assessing the state of the current learning environment, and to guide the processes of decision making and implementation by educators.

These tools have broad application to a variety of educational environments; schools, universities and community education. A specific case study of the application of these tools in a university environmental science degree is outlined.

This paper focuses on teacher education in environmental education. In seeking alternatives and improvements in EE teacher education, it is instructive to see what lessons might be learnt from efforts at distance education in this field. The paper will outline the structure and context of a teacher education course in environmental education -- a course that is part of an off-campus (distance education) Bachelor of Education program -- and then consider a number of curriculum issues that have arisen in the history of this course.

The course itself is located in a Bachelor of Education program at Deakin University and is available for practising teachers throughout Australia who are interested in upgrading their education qualifications without having to travel physically to the host institution offering the degree. The B.Ed, program comprises a number of ‘generic’ curriculum courses in such areas as curriculum design and development, educational enquiry and action research, and a number of ‘specialist’ curriculum courses in such areas as mathematics education, language education and art and music education. The environmental education course takes its place among the ‘specialist’ curriculum courses.

Bill Stapp passed away in May 2001, thirty one years after his first influential visit to Australia. Although many among the current generation of younger environmental educators might not know his name they are very likely to be working within a framework for environmental education that he worked hard to establish. This paper discusses his contribution from a socially critical standpoint and within the context of the relationship between formal education and informal settings that underpinned his work. In writing this paper I draw on his writings, commentaries on his work, personal knowledge and an in-depth interview I conducted with him in 1991.

In this article, we collectively explore the significance of engaging with theory in environmental education research. Inspired by Jackson and Mazzei’s (2011) postqualitative research methodology, each researcher provides a short sample of engaging with his/her chosen theoretical concept for one shared data source. Through our three individual theoretical engagements with a short video, we collectively demonstrate that the data may be enacted in different ways, based on the theoretical concept that is engaged. This may potentially actualise multiple different and partial realities of the researched, and by decentring the researcher, this can also rework humanist epistemologies. We suggest that non-researcher-centred and/or non-anthropocentric actualising may contribute to more sustainable relationships in environmental education and its research, not only between the researcher and the researched, but also among the researchers.

Environmental, economic, and social trends suggest the need for more sustainable ways of thinking and patterns of behaviour. Such a shift would require humanity to function at high levels of ecological literacy, which relies on a certain amount of scientific literacy. However, troubling evidence indicates an international pattern of student disengagement with science at the secondary level. Evidence also suggests that it is difficult to integrate environmental or sustainability education at this level, both within New Zealand and elsewhere. This research was aimed at examining the use of a novel approach, using permaculture, in junior secondary science (Years 9 and 10) to enhance students’ ecological and scientific literacy, as well as their attitudes toward studying science in school.

Permaculture is an ecological design system based on science and ethics. A permaculture approach to science education involves eco-design thinking, as well as the use of local permaculture properties and practitioners, and the science behind common permaculture practices. The approach is also meant to be relevant and engaging, and to promote systems thinking. This study involved the design and delivery of an intervention based on permaculture principles to one Year 10 science class in New Zealand.

Research took the form of a naturalistic, interpretive, mixed methods case study, which included the use of questionnaires, interviews, and observations. Data collection focused on the impacts of a permaculture approach on the teaching and learning of science, on students’ ecological literacy, and on students’ attitudes toward learning science in school. Pre- and post-intervention questionnaires probed students’ opinions on the environment, science, and learning science in school, and tested their sustainable thinking and systems thinking with concept mapping and SOLO Taxonomy exercises. Classroom observations took place over the course of 12 weeks, on average 3 days per week, totalling 31 days. Before and after some classroom visits, I had informal conversations with the teacher, along with three formal interviews before, during and after the intervention. Three focus groups of students were interviewed immediately following the intervention.

Findings show that a permaculture approach to junior secondary science can impact positively on students’ understanding of science and sustainability, and may impact on their attitudes toward studying science in school. It also appeared to impact positively on the science teacher's

attitude toward including sustainability in his teaching practice, and on his own sustainability learning. Regarding both students and teachers, a permaculture approach appears to have been effective to cultivate attitudes and trellis learning.

The teacher and the students responded favourably to many aspects of the intervention, including the overall focus on the environment, the field trips, and some classroom learning activities. The teacher reported appreciating the way the intervention contextualised science with real world examples. Most students reported appreciating the experiential aspects of the intervention, as well as the relevance that a permaculture approach to science education provided. Findings indicate that advances in ecological and scientific literacy varied among students. Some students appeared to: improve their use of science and sustainability vocabulary; become more aware of select socio-scientific issues; better recognise scientific and ecological limits and possibilities. Some students also showed advances in sustainable thinking and systems thinking. Although many students expressed concern about issues such as pollution, wildlife, and genetic engineering — and prioritised protecting the environment over making money — there appeared to be a disconnect between these feelings and a sense of personal responsibility to act. Most students reported enjoying learning science with a focus on the environment, with one cohort indicating much greater enjoyment of the permaculture approach than their usual level of enjoyment of learning science in school.

Trends in environmental degradation, population growth, energy inflation, and economic stagnation — especially pronounced since the beginning of this inquiry in 2008 — indicate that the world of the future will require ecologically literate citizens who can design and create truly sustainable systems for all human endeavors. Cultivating such citizens, and trellising their science and sustainability learning has implications for science education. This thesis identifies an innovative approach for junior secondary science in New Zealand that provides a way towards a more sustainable future.

A framework to critically consider the ecological sustainability messaging in children’s literature is presented to authors, illustrators and editors, as well as teachers, parents and students/children. We have applied this framework to three books from the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) 2015 Notables list using critical discourse analysis (CDA). Findings suggest that there are themes and images in these award-winning texts that do not support ecological sustainability and we argue that children’s literature should be judged with criteria including ecological sustainability. Our hope is that ecological sustainability principles and practices lead to changes in social discourse through intergenerational storytelling.

This study examined the effects of Sydney Water's work based environmental education program, the CARE Update, on the knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and reported behaviour of Sydney Water Customer Service Officers. A paired sample of eighty Customer Service Officers were surveyed by a combination of questionnaire and interview techniques. A comparison was made with a matched sample from the general community. Customer Service Officers who had attended the CARE Update course were more likely to support the attitudes and beliefs embodied in the New Environmental Paradigm when compared with of officers who had not attended the course and with the matched sample from the general community. However, staff who attended the course were no more knowledgeable on a number of key aspects of their job related responsibilities for environmental protection and were no more likely to report changes in their behaviours for environmental protection, either at work or at home, than were other officere who had not attended the course.

Attempts to model the learning process in environmental education were seriously pursued during the latter part of the 1970's (Greenall Gough 1993) and became a preoccupation with many researchers during the 1980's. This article which contributes to this body of research reports on a study undertaken between 1988 and 1994 (Mahony 1994). The project focused on a process antecedent to the above model, namely the manner by which a person comes to understand and relate to his or her environment, on the premise that a viable environmental education should be based on this foundation.

This study of an adult rural population in the Wollombi Valley of NSW, Australia, combined a contextual historical survey with a qualitative field study derived from an interpretivist paradigm. It identified four intuitive and experiential ways of knowing which constituted well defined ideologies and for which the term ‘positions’ was adopted to convey an idea of their existential and entrenched character. The positions were designated Men of the Land, Earth People, Other Agenda Folk and Unaligned Individuals.

Years later, when Rahel returned to the river, it greeted her with a ghastly skull's smile, with holes where teeth had been, and a limp hand raised from a hospital bed.

Both things had happened.

It had shrunk. And she had grown.

Downriver, a saltwater barrage had been built, in exchange for votes from the influential paddy-farmer lobby. The barrage regulated the inflow of saltwater from the backwaters that opened into the Arabian Sea. So now they had two harvests a year instead of one. More rice, for the price of a river.

Despite the fact that it was June, and raining, the river was no more than a swollen drain now. A thin ribbon of thick water that lapped wearily at the mud banks on either side, sequined with the occasional silver slant of a dead fish. It was choked with a succulent weed, whose furred brown roots waved like thin tentacles under water. Bronze-winged lily-trotters walked across it. Splay-footed, cautious.

Once it had had the power to evoke fear. To change lives. But now its teeth were drawn, its spirit spent. It was just a slow, sludging green ribbon lawn that ferried fetid garbage to the sea. Bright plastic bags blew across its viscous, weedy surface like subtropical flying-flowers (Roy 1997, p. 124).

This study evaluated the current level of environmental concern amongst business school students, and attempted to determine if the personal characteristics of respondents (namely, their nationality, gender and age) were reliable predictors of scores. Two hundred students in three nations (Australia, France and Singapore) were surveyed, using a modified version of the Environmental Concern Scale originally developed by Weigel and Weigel (1978).

It was found that, in general, students displayed a relatively high level of environmental concern. However, whilst substantial differences in mean scores were not found between all three nationalities, the results did show that statistically significant differences exist between at least two countries – the Australian and Singaporean samples.

There was no statistically significant link between gender and environmental concern. However, the results did indicate a significant correlation with age, with older students displaying higher levels of environmental concern than their younger counterparts.

Event tourism is accompanied by social, economic and environmental benefits and costs. The assessment of this form of tourism has however largely focused on the social and economic perspectives, while environmental assessments have been bound to a destination-based approach. The application of the Ecological Footprint methodology allows for these environmental assessment boundaries to be extended. This case study applies the footprint methodology to the Australian Association for Environmental Education (AAEE) Biennial Conference held in Adelaide in 2004. The results of the case study provide important insight into the planning and delivery of future events for the Association and event managers.

Using drawings and accompanying written and oral explanations by third- and sixth-grade students, this phenomenological study is an examination of the children’s perception of the ideal environmental school. Analysis of the 128 features in the drawing yielded four categories: (1) physical – with natural areas and outdoor learning, (2) cognitive – core subjects and environmental ones, (3) emotional – the students’ feelings and the spaces for releasing stress and energy and (4) educational – environmental education (EE) includes a variety of pedagogies, features of nature and environmental solutions. While the drawings and explanations presented the school as the children know it, without boundary-breaking imagination and creativity, they also showed a desire for a positive school atmosphere, defined as essential to holistic EE and to leading environmental change. The positive atmosphere, nature and the environmental spaces can be the foundation of developing EE that is not fear based, which often generates helplessness and prevents action. The recommendations emphasise the need to enhance positive thinking and not to focus only on fear tactics as a means to enhance holistic EE and protect the environment.

This paper discusses the use of an estuary monitoring toolkit Ngā Waihotanga Iho as a central part of a Māori-centred education project undertaken by Kaipara hapū (sub-tribe), Te Uri O Hau, in Northland, New Zealand. The toolkit was designed by New Zealand’s National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA). In this project, Te Uri O Hau collaborated with NIWA and regional high schools in order to use this toolkit as a mechanism for kaitikaitanga (environmental guardianship) and Indigenous-led environmental education. This paper demonstrates that approaches such as this can be powerful vehicles for Indigenous self-determination as Māori actively undertake tribal development and environmental guardianship, and strengthen the place of Indigenous knowledge, priorities and approaches within an evolving ‘post-colonial’ education system.

The AAEE 2014 research symposium in Hobart provided a privileged space for researchers and practitioners within environmental education and sustainability education (EE/SE) to come together and create dialogues about education for sustainability research. This essay is a critical reflection from postgraduate researchers about the symposium and the EE/SE research landscape more broadly. The authors interrogate contemporary research frameworks and practices, and deliberate on how current perceptions enable and inhibit performance within EE/SE research. The authors ask provocative questions and encourage readers to imagine for themselves what a new research landscape, freed of calcified frameworks and entrenched systems, might look like. The essay then draws on an ecological systems perspective as a means of reimagining EE/SE research within a more emergent landscape that values inclusivity, democracy, collaborative inquiry and curiosity.

In this article, I call for a cripping of environmental education as a necessary move in shifting away from the field’s current conceptions of disability as defect and deficiency, and towards disrupting the structures and processes that operate as normalizing technologies within ableism/sanism. Through an examination of the ways that the field of environmental education has/has not engaged critical disability politics, I illuminate how disability is not often included within environmental education literature. When it is, it is often through the use of disability as metaphor or through recommendations for best practices in accommodating disabilities. More often though within environmental education, disability has operated as a hidden curriculum, underpinning much of the field’s curricular, pedagogical, and even philosophical foundations. Through a cripping of the field these compulsory able-bodied/able-minded assumptions are made apparent. I suggest that by centering crip bodies and minds through cripistemologies, we might enable new ways of knowing, being in, connecting to, and understanding the natural world.