This paper explores some of the historical and political ancestries of constructivism. In it, I suggest that there are dark and potentially ecologically disastrous themes hidden in the happy use of constructivism in contemporary education.

The field of research in environmental education has experienced several changes in orientation in its first 25 or so years. In the period of the 70s and 80s, the most visible approach to environmental education research was clearly applied science in nature. From the late 80s/early 90s there has been a period of intense debate about research in…

Given that feminist poststructuralism disrupts countless notions many of us have been "raised" with, conceptualizing what feminist poststructuralism might mean for understanding and enacting environmental education research and practice can be difficult. This paper articulates understandings and assumptions of poststructuralism and explores how it…

Where social epistemology has been applied in environmental education research, certain words have come to be associated with it, such as, "social," "contextualized," "strategic," "political," "pragmatic," "democratic," and "participatory." In this paper, I first suggest interpretations of these words that potentially avoid absolutism, relativism,…

This study of a young learner's scientific and artistic "sensibilities" in and about a beach place adds to the evidence base about learning in environmental education while contributing to discussions about "emerging genres" of enquiry. The study pays strong attention to the learner's quest for "coherence" in "coming to know" about the two "ways…

This paper discusses methodological criteria for environmental education. The place of environmental education in the curriculum has led to its being considered as a dimension that should cut across different disciplines, instead of offering a corpus of contents by itself. Nevertheless, experience has shown that ecology has systematically filled…

This paper explores the implications of a renewed model of citizenship and citizenship education developed on the principles of ecology and ecological interdependence. By reframing our community from a human polity to a biotic community, the scope of our citizenship responsibilities shift. While expanding to encompass a global context, this new…

In response to environmental degradation, the Lesotho government, in collaboration with the Danish government, introduced an Environmental Education Support Project in schools in 2001. In order to optimise the achievement of the project goals the, Monitoring and Research Team was established to formatively evaluate the project as it unfolded. The…

Over the last century, much was researched in the field of Education, be its educational policies or more effective learning strategies. It is only recently that studies have begun to focus on the teachers. This article describes an investigation about how the knowledge of teachers working in the field of Environmental Education is formed,…

This work presents questions related to the viability and the requirements for the implementation of a National Policy of Water Resources in Brazil, and identifies the means to bring about active participation by the population in the management of water resources. While social inequalities may be an impediment to the implementation of full…

Identifying and considering public attitudes towards various aspects of water supply and sanitation services by planners and decision makers represent an important developmental element relating to the quality, efficiency, and performance of those services. A sample of 1000 Palestinian adults completed a questionnaire assessing attitudes towards…

The authors take a reflective journey to explore the research methodology utilised in a multi-method, multi-site research study of children's environmental learning in schoolgrounds in Australia. Informed by an extensive literature review and dialogue with researchers around the world, the study constructed a research design and procedure that…

This case study describes the development and field-testing of a research-based scoring rubric for analyzing elementary students' schoolyard habitat drawings. To justify schoolyard learning experiences in U.S. schools, teachers, program evaluators, and others need valid, reliable, and objective assessment tools for determining if, and how, these…

Commentators on children's experience (largely the urban experience of the developed countries) indicate that publicly accessible open space for children is being limited due to commercialization, litigation, fear for children's safety, and changes in lifestyle. One of these open spaces facing change is the school grounds. Evidence is drawn from a…

In a recent review of school grounds research, Dyment (2004a) highlights a lack of studies on the "process" of school grounds improvement, particularly in the secondary school context. This paper seeks to respond to this gap in the literature by reporting emerging findings from a three-year action research study of six English secondary schools…