In this article, the author discusses the implications of articles by Louise Chawla (1998) and Karen Malone (1999a) for "doing research." One of the most interesting implications of these two papers for environmental education research is the issues they raise about the challenges for environmental education researchers and education researchers of working across and with methodological difference. Chawla and other colleagues contributed to methodological and other debates around significant life experiences research, while Malone highlighted challenges facing researchers who collaborate with (other) activists. Taken together, these two papers act as a starting point for a discussion of adversarial discourse, generous scholarship, and the need to probe the potential for, and challenges of, collaborating with others working from different epistemological, ontological or methodological positions. Their papers point to the importance of learning to work across and with methodological, epistemological and ontological difference when doing environmental education research.