Deciding and doing what's right for people and planet : an investigation of the ethics-oriented learning of novice environmental educators (original) (raw)
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This study probes the ethics-oriented reflexive deliberations of three novice environmental education practitioners in South Africa. Two of the cases examined work in a local government context, and the third in an environmental non-governmental organisation context. All three practitioners are studying a one-year professional development course in environmental education. The research asks how their ethical deliberations ‘come to be what they are’, at the interface of their workplace and course-based learning processes. Working within a relational, social realist ontology, the study takes a sociocultural-historical approach to learning, development and social change. Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) provides theoretical tools and a descriptive language to approach the rich, qualitative data derived from workplace and course observations, extensive interviews, and document review. Critical discourse analysis was used as a secondary analytical tool to probe ethical and environmental discourses that were found to be influential in the course and workplace activity systems. Data from the three case studies was analysed in stages. In the first stage, CHAT provided a theoretical perspective and language of description to analyse the interacting activity systems in which each learner-practitioner’s ethics-oriented reflexive deliberations occurred. This provided a platform for the second stage of analysis which was framed by Margaret Archer’s (1995) social realist theory of morphogenesis/ morphostasis, followed by a summative retroductive analysis, to give an account of the interplay of historically-emergent social and cultural structures and individual reflexivity in relation to the ethical dimensions of environmental education practice. The study traces how ethics-oriented reflexive deliberations occur at the untidy, unpredictable intersection of workplace, course and personal contexts, and are strongest when they are situated in authentic contexts that resonate with learner-practitioners’ ‘ultimate concerns’ (after Archer, 2003; 2007). In this study, the learner-practitioners’ ‘ultimate concerns’ included family, personal well-being, social justice, cultural identity and religious commitments. The scope and depth of learner-practitioners’ social-ecological knowledge was also identified as a key factor influencing ethics-oriented reflexive deliberations, although the mediation of such knowledge can be hindered by language and conceptual barriers, amongst others. The study also noted how ethical positions circulating in the workplace, course and personal contexts were diverse, uneven and dynamic. Some ethical positions were found to be more explicitly differentiated than others, either resonating with or being overlooked by the learner-practitioners as they deliberated the ethical dimensions of their environmental education practice. In situations where there was limited depth, conceptual clarity and/ or confidence to engage directly with ethical concerns, there was a tendency towards (inadvertent) ethical relativism. Insights derived from the study suggest that these factors have limiting effects on the ethics-oriented reflexive deliberations of novice environmental educators. These insights point to the need for ethical deliberations to be re-personalised in context and underpinned by depth knowledge. A relational and pragmatic approach to environmental ethics (that recognises the validity of judgemental rationality – which can be fallible – and which seeks out practical adequacy) is put forward as appropriate and potentially generative in environmental education and training processes. This would need to be supported by careful attention to the influence of environmental discourses and practices in shaping ethical deliberations, and may also be helpful in developing a much-needed accessible, everyday language of ethical engagement. This study’s contribution to new knowledge in the field of environmental education is through its account of ethics-oriented reflexive deliberations emerging (in the Archerian morphogenetic sense) in complex, indeterminate ways at the interface of sociocultural and social-ecological contexts. The ethics-oriented reflexive deliberations of novice environmental educators occur in relation to their ‘ultimate concerns’ and are advanced or hindered by the historically-emergent practices, discourses and material realities of their workplace, personal and educational contexts. These insights require that the complex interplay of intersecting contexts and concerns that shape ethics-oriented reflexive deliberations be acknowledged and carefully mediated in both workplace-based and course-based professional development processes.
Ethics-oriented Learning in Environmental Education Workplaces: An activity theory approach
In the context of increasing national and global environmental challenges and their implications for the working world, new ethics and practices are being introduced into workplaces that take better account of socio-ecological relations. Little is understood, however, about the nature of ethics-oriented workplace learning. Drawing on Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), which enables historically and contextually situated relational perspectives to emerge, this paper explores contradictions in the activity systems of two young environmental education learner-practitioners struggling to engage with the ethical dimensions of their professional work and the professional development course they are studying. The study focuses in particular on the environmental values and ethics component of their course -a year-long Learnership in Environmental Education, Training and Development Practices (EETDP). The paper reflects how tensions and contradictions within and between the interacting activity systems of the workplace, the course, and its regulating qualifications authority influence the teaching and learning of the environmental ethics component of the course. Ethics-oriented teaching and learning processes are found to be strongly influenced by the 'rules' and 'mediating tools' of these interacting systems, but these are often at odds with the ethical perspectives, socio-cultural context and skills of the 'subject' and 'community'. These systemic contradictions can be more fully understood when their cultural and historical origins are made explicit. The analytical process has led to a more nuanced understanding of ethics-oriented teaching and learning in a workplace-based course, and has revealed several areas needing more careful research (particularly the area of environmental discourses) and the explicit and implicit language of ethics.
Encountering Paradigmatic Tensions and Shifts in Environmental Education
Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 2005
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 principles of action research were to guide the monitoring process. The paper discusses the findings of the early phase of the monitoring process with reference to the project's epistemological commitment to initiate paradigmatic shift, in the context of conceptualizing environmental education and the associated learning theories and teaching approaches through workshops with relevant stakeholders in the school curricula development. It is illustrated that the workshops initiated cognitive tensions and shifts amongst the participants, and that their occurrence was indicative of the interrogation of the positivist paradigm underpinning the education system in Lesotho. Résumé En réponse à la dégradation environnementale, le gouvernement du Lesotho, en collaboration avec le gouvernement danois, a introduit un projet d'appui à l'éducation environnementale dans les écoles, en 2001. En vue d'optimiser les accomplissements des buts du projet, on a monté une équipe de recherche et d'observation pour faire une évaluation formative du projet au fur et à mesure qu'il se déroulait. Les principes de recherche active devaient guider le processus de contrôle. Le texte discute des observations de la phase initiale du processus de surveillance en référence à l'engagement épistémologique du projet qui est d'initier un changement paradigmatique et ce, dans le contexte de la conceptualisation de l'éducation environnementale, des théories d'apprentissage et des approches pédagogiques qui y sont associées, par des ateliers donnés par des partenaires compétents dans le développement des programmes d'études des écoles. On y montre que les ateliers ont initié des tensions et des changements cognitifs entre les participants et que leur occurrence reflétait les interrogations du paradigme positiviste soutenant le système d'éducation du Lesotho.
New ethical challenges within environmental and sustainability education
Environmental Education Research, 2016
The following mini-collection of papers derives from contributions to the very first symposium of the Environmental and Sustainability Research Network (ESER) at the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) in Porto, Portugal, September 2014. The symposium was an international and inter-disciplinary collaboration in the areas of environmental, sustainability, global and development education research with a special focus on current ethical and political issues within these areas. The symposium brought together researchers from four countries-Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, and Sweden-who have a common interest in confronting political and ethical issues in the context of educational initiatives. The Environmental and Sustainability Research Network (ESER) is the 30th network within European Educational Research Association (EERA) which annually organises ECER at different locations in Europe. The network was initiated in 2010 and developed through international collaborations during ECER in Berlin 2011, Cádiz 2012 and Istanbul 2013. Link convener of the network is Per Sund, Mälardalen University, Sweden. The ESER network seems to fulfil a large need and has grown fast-today it organises over 170 researchers from 23 countries where all continents are represented. At the first conference as independent network in Porto 2014 about 80 researchers attended and to the second conference in Budapest 2015 this figure was raised to over 100. The key objective of ESER is to facilitate a network of European researchers who will critically investigate and discuss the dynamic relations between education, learning, environment and sustainability issues. The network provides opportunities to share, discuss, disseminate and advance environmental and sustainability education research, and to promote the development and impact of such research. In this way the network aims to contribute to conceptual and methodological development in this field, as well as enhance empirical research in formal and informal educational settings from preschool to higher education and other adult learning contexts. The research area is wide and includes curriculum, whole school approaches, teacher competencies, implementation and policy discussions on the one hand, and learning outcomes and learner participation on the other. Education is accordingly a key focus of the network including the specific approaches to learning and teaching that are relevant when studying complex contemporary societal issues. Research activities and discussion in this network are closely related to long traditions in educational philosophy including the role and purposes of education, for example, the relation between education as a tool for societal change at large or for the development of the informed individual. What makes these educational discussions distinctive is the critical analysis of international and intergenerational aspects of the educational settings and activities.
This paper explores the past twenty years of environmental learning in the South African curriculum in order to consider how one might best research a knowledge focus within the Fundisa for Change national teacher education programme. In exploring this knowledge focus, the paper draws on international literature. It also extensively, but not exclusively, draws on two key publications which informed the 2002 and the 2011 curriculum changes in South Africa. The paper draws on social realist curriculum theory, underpinned by critical realism. This theoretical perspective, which includes Bernstein’s pedagogic device and particularly recontextualisation of knowledge across the pedagogical landscape, provides a language of description for critically reviewing knowledge and environmental learning. In particular, the review develops five perspectives on environmental knowledge as it pertains to curriculum which include: • Perspective #1) new environmental knowledge in the curriculum; • Perspective #2) environmental knowledge in local and global contexts; • Perspective # 3) dynamic knowledge for open-ended and futuristic thinking; • Perspective #4) depth and complexity of environmental knowledge; and • Perspective #5) combining discipline-specific core knowledge and skills with a systems perspective. The paper argues for a re-emphasis and review of new environmental knowledge and learning support materials. It suggests a consideration of context-rich but not context-bound explorations of local and global environmental issues and the need for adopting open-ended and futuristic thinking in the context of the dynamism of environmental knowledge. This involves exploring systems of meaning and structures of knowledge in dealing with the complexity of environmental knowledge and acknowledging the challenges of a transformative ideology within such a complex knowledge system. Additionally the paper argues for creative ways of working across disciplines to develop better understanding of discipline-specific concepts and their potential to contribute to meaningful learning. The paper concludes by suggesting a research trajectory for future environmental education research in the context of the new South African Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) extending the emphasis in this paper on the official recontextualising field, to fields across the entire pedagogic device.
Knowledge and power: the illusion of emancipatory pedagogies within environmental education1
The Southern African Journal of Environmental Education, 1996
The increased calls for transformation in response to the socio-ecological 'crisis' and the movement towards more sustainable societies; the dramatic political changes in South Africa, Eastern Europe and elsewhere; the epistemological shifts in the conceptualisation of science, education and research, and the paradoxes of the world of the late twentieth century provide the context for this paper. The need for educational organisations and educators to make an effective curriculum response to environmental and development concerns legitimises socially critical approaches to environmental education and a concern with processes of social change. We are faced, therefore, with dilemmas of personal, professional and political change: the need for transformation of both actors and structures. The paper highlights the unquestioned assumptions which underlie growing calls for social transformation and considers the significance of a socially critical orientation to environmental educ...
Environmental Education Research, 2012
This article suggests that environmental ethics can have great relevance for environmental ethical content analyses in environmental education and education for sustainable development research. It is based on a critique that existing educational research does not reflect the variety of environmental ethical theories. Accordingly, we suggest an alternative and more nuanced environmental ethical conceptual framework divided into Value-oriented Environmental Ethics and Relation-oriented Environmental Ethics and present two pragmatic schedules for analyses of the value and relation contents of e.g. classroom conversations, textbooks and policy documents. This framework draws on a comparative reading of some 30 key books and 20 key articles in academic journals in the field of environmental philosophy and reflects main traits in environmental ethics from the early 1970s to the present day.
Southern African Journal of Environmental Education
The study opens with a brief review of how education in colonial southern Africa was steered by a succession of externally framed abstractions that have been implemented within the prevailing hegemony of western modernisation that dominated and marginalised indigenous cultures. It probes how, within an expanding functionalist framework, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been similarly constituted as a proposition for implementation. Here the supposition is that implementing ESD as an intervention will transform education into an inclusive and collaborative pedagogy that will shape competences for participants to transform society towards a sustainable future. In an effort to explore the possibility of making a break from a succession of education imperatives functioning as 'salvation narratives' to put things right in Africa, the study explores ESD from a more situated and emergent vantage point within African landscapes, philosophy and cultural practices. This requires a shift from a view of ESD as a perspective to be brought in and enacted to foster change, to ESD as a situated engagement in education as a process where relevance is deliberated and brought out in quality education with high order skills. This perspective exemplifies working with a more fully situated framing of deliberative social learning for the common good. It is explored here to contemplate how socio-cultural processes of deliberative ethics and co-engaged reflexive processes of learning-led change might emerge. Here, also, using a capabilities approach might provide useful starting points for ESD as an expansive process of transformative social learning.
Learning to Govern Oneself: Environmental Education Pedagogy and the Formation of an Ethical Subject
Australian Journal of Environmental Education
This paper uses the work of Weber and Foucault to explore the ways in which environmental education may operate as a site for forming and maintaining particular ethical competencies which most environmental educators argue are necessary in order to live in an ‘environmentally sustainable’ manner. Environmental education practices, as evidenced in the Earthkeepers program, are examined to show how environmental education may be working in quite particular ways to construct specific ethical abilities and competencies in students. It is argued that we need to be far more concerned with and aware of the actual means we use to encourage students to live in an ‘environmentally sustainable’ fashion.