The importance of imagination in understanding sustainability has often been overlooked. This paper examines acts of imagining in teaching and learning that elicit and enable the emotive experience of empathy. I frame ways of thinking about imagination and empathy through theoretical perspectives of otherness. I report on research findings into…

Can community and school gardens help people learn to build social resilience to potential food shortages? We seek to address this question through an examination of the ways in which gardens can teach individual and community resiliency in times of emergency, pockets of food insecurity, and the challenges presented by climate change. We focus on…

Critical environmental education promised a reconstructive critique of any education that reconstituted social and ecological injustices. Post-critical inquiry in environmental education research revitalizes that commitment. The "voices" of the researched and researcher are well represented in this empirical study of a radical curriculum…

A "slow pedagogy of place" in (environmental/outdoor) education has been enacted by the two authors over the past three years in a third year undergraduate semester-long unit named Experiencing the Australian Landscape. An integrated practical and theoretical, de- and reconstruction of fast pedagogies is now needed, we believe, if…

Children's gardening programs have enjoyed increasing popularity in recent years. An Australian environmental education non-profit organization implemented a program, entitled Multicultural Schools Gardens, in disadvantaged (low-income) schools that used food gardening as a focus for implementing a culturally-focused environmental education…

In Australia there has been a rapid move to an acceptance of education for sustainability as mainstream environmental education. We argue that education for sustainability, with its platform of assisting individuals in making apparently informed decisions to create a more sustainable world, is at some distance from promoting more ethically-based…

"The Lorax," written by children's author Dr. Seuss in 1971, has been used extensively by educators with participants of all ages in outdoor and environmental education. This paper results from a critical reflection upon my own practice of employing "The Lorax" as a teaching resource with senior secondary and tertiary students…

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…

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…

Presents a large-scale teacher development program, a personal greenhouse gas calculator, and resources for teachers and students. (Contains 57 references.) (DDR)

Examines some of the ways in which nature is textualized in technocultural discourses with particular reference to the incorporation of satellite-based weather monitoring and digital imaging technologies into global consumer markets of information and entertainment. Suggests that critical readings of popular media representations of weather are…

We reflect on methodological issues arising in two of our own research projects as a form of practice, as a way of engaging in a praxis of project research. The projects chosen for this purpose are themselves concerned with teacher education and curriculum development in environmental education: they include participatory "reflective…

The Murray River, lying at the heart of Australia's largest catchment, is used extensively in outdoor education programs in south-eastern Australia. Since European settlement the river's ecological health has declined considerably due to activities such as damming for irrigation and clearing of native vegetation. Colonial notions of how the river…