Where is the Love in Environmental Education Research? A Diffractive Analysis of Steiner, Ecosomaesthetics and Biophilia

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 200-218
Author(s):  
Simone M. Blom ◽  
Claudio Aguayo ◽  
Teresa Carapeto
Keyword(s):  
Education Research ◽  
Environmental Education ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Relationship ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Australian Association

AbstractIn environmental education research (EER), love is revered as a way to heal or mend the human relationship with nature. However, this interpretation of love rests in a humanist paradigm that considers nonhuman nature as external to the human being. To this end, love has generally been considered as an outward emotion, towards nature, and is less considered an inner movement, towards the human as nature. We were interested in exploring this conceptualisation of nature and love of/as nature and question: Is there potential to locate the concept of love in EER through different theoretical positions to explore the possibilities for its (re)conceptualisation? We aim to stretch academic thinking to (re)consider love through identifying where our own research in environmental education has involved love through the intersection of our journeys at the Australian Association of Environmental Education Research Symposium workshop. In response to the context of this workshop, which explored the concept of diffraction as described by Barad, we have chosen to adopt a diffractive analysis as the methodology to analyse our theoretical perspectives of love in EER. We explore the word love in this article using diffraction to understand the relationality of human and nonhuman nature through our research interests in Steiner, ecosomaesthetics and biophilia. This process cracked our theoretical silos to more openly consider: Where is the love in EER?

scholarly journals Environmental and Sustainability Education Research, Past and Future: Three Perspectives From Late, Mid, and Early Career Researchers

2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert (Bob) Stevenson ◽  
Jo-Anne Ferreira ◽  
Sherridan Emery
Keyword(s):  
Education Research ◽  
Environmental Education ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Sustainability Education ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Career Stages ◽  
Early Career Researchers ◽  
Biennial Conference ◽  
Australian Association ◽  
The Future

AbstractThe first research symposium, organised in conjunction with the Australian Association for Environmental Education (AAEE) biennial conference, began with a dialogue between scholars at three different academic career stages. As we all entered the field at different periods in its development, the first part of our presentation and this article provide our perspectives on the context, approaches and issues that characterised the field at the time we became involved in environmental education (EE) and EE research. The second part of this article presents the lessons we have learnt from EE research, and where we see the field headed in the future.

Continuing the Narrative Some 20 years Later

2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noel Gough
Keyword(s):  
Education Research ◽  
Environmental Education ◽  
National Conference ◽  
Anglophone Literature ◽  
Australian Museum ◽  
Australian Association

I wrote ‘Narrative and Nature: Unsustainable Fictions in Environmental Education’ in 1991 as a revised version of a paper subtitled ‘Poststructural Inquiries in Environmental Education’ that I presented at the Sixth National Conference of the Australian Association for Environmental Education in September 1990. To the best of my knowledge, these papers were the first instances of advocacy for poststructuralist analyses of dicourses/practices in the Anglophone literature of environmental education. The key influences on my thinking at this time were US and Canadian ‘reconceptualist’ curriculum scholars, including Cleo Cherryholmes, Jacques Daignault, William Doll, Clermont Gauthier, Rebecca Martusewicz, William Pinar and William Reynolds. The significance and impact of my poststructuralist inquiries in environmental education were recognised by the award of the inaugural Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Environmental Education Research in 1997. Since then, my ‘post’ scholarship has expanded to include postcolonialism and posthumanism. Narrative continues to be an important theme in my work, especially through my development of an approach to narrative experimentation that I call ‘rhizosemiotic play’.

Talking Up Country: Language, Natureculture and Interculture in Australian Environmental Education Research

2011 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Whitehouse
Keyword(s):  
Education Research ◽  
Environmental Education ◽  
Philosophical Argument ◽  
Human Settlement ◽  
Dominant Language ◽  
Education Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Interface ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Made In

AbstractAustralia is an old continent with an immensely long history of human settlement. The argument made in this paper is that Australia is, and has always been, a natureculture. Just as English was introduced as the dominant language of education with European colonisation, so arrived an ontological premise that linguistically divides a categorised nature from culture and human from “the” environment. Drawing on published work from the Australian tropics, this paper employs a socionature approach to make a philosophical argument for a more nuanced understanding of language, the cultural interface and contemporary moves towards interculture in Australian environmental education practice.

48 The Evolving Characteristics of Environmental Education Research

2013 ◽  
pp. 512-517
Author(s):  
Robert B. Stevenson ◽  
Justin Dillon ◽  
Arjen E. J. Wals ◽  
Michael Brody
Keyword(s):  
Education Research ◽  
Environmental Education
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