Situated culture, ethics and new learning theory: emerging perspectives in environmental education research

Celebrating the 8th International Invitational Research and Development Seminar. This edition of the EEASA Journal celebrates the hosting of the 8th International Invitational Research and Development Seminar on Environmental and Health Education in South Africa in March 2005. The International Invitational Research and Development Seminars are ‘special events’ in the field of environmental and health education research. They are characterised by their democratic, deliberative nature, and by their intent to scope innovation and methodological issues. First established some years ago in Copenhagen, Denmark, these seminars have provided an evolving international forum for researchers interested in research methodology to meet and frame new themes, trends and issues arising in the field of environmental education and health education research

Rhizome connections...

There are a number of papers in the journal that reflect a trend in environmental education towards deliberating recuperative, relational epistemologies. In their paper addressing the near-schism between those that appear to be antagonistic to post-structuralism and deconstruction, and those that find them generative in their inquiries, Noel Gough and Leigh Price go right to the heart of human inquiry by questioning the most commonly held assumption in the research enterprise – that the social sciences require a different methodology from the natural sciences.Through giving attention to relativist (constructionist) epistemology and a stratified, realist ontology – which assumes a relational account of ontology – they suggest the same basic methodology for both the social and natural sciences, arguing that ‘... society and humans mutually transform/reproduce each other, just as nature and humans mutually transform/reproduce each other’. In doing this, they address over-simplified dialectics between ‘constructionism’ and realism which has shaped much human inquiry (including environmental education research)

Reflections on the ‘3rd World Environmental Education Congress: Educational pathways towards sustainability’, Italy, 2005

Conference Theme: The congress theme ‘Educational pathways towards sustainability’ foregrounded the current ‘state of play’ in environmental education / education for sustainability, at the start of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD), and drew attention to the role of education in creating pathways towards sustainability. Mario Solomone, convenor of the congress, in his orientation to the congress describes the congress as being about ‘cultural changes and cultural forces for change’, highlighting the role of education, training and communication in redirecting values, knowledge and behaviour to construct a human society ‘that is fairer and more aware of the equilibrium of a beautiful and fragile planet’ (Salomone, 2005: 6). To facilitate deliberations during the conference a set of interrelated themes were established which included: communication and the environment; paths to sustainability; research and assessment in environmental education; sustainable education; training the trainers; community awareness; promoting participation and governance and creating a network; economics and ecology; environment and health; farming and related issues; ethics; and emotional involvements. These congress themes, together with an impressive array of keynote papers kept congress participants actively engaged with the question of the DESD

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Addendum to the paper Landcare: New directions in professional development for environmental education

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Editorial: Methodology, Context and Quality

Note: This edition of the Southern African Journal of Environmental Education (SAJEE) is a ‘double volume’ and contains papers submitted in 2012 and 2013. The production of a double volume has been necessitated by administrative problems experienced by the journal production team in 2012, which affected the successful publication of a 2012 edition. However, the Council of the Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa (EEASA) agreed to respond by producing a double-volume edition for 2012/2013. Journal readers are reminded that the production of this journal is voluntary and depends heavily on voluntary administration and other systems. The patience of authors and readers in the 2012/2013 years of production is much appreciated. The 2012/2013 double-volume SAJEE is richly textured with two think pieces that open the journal, thirteen research papers and three viewpoint papers. The papers in the 2012/2013 double volume include papers by authors from Sweden, the United Kingdom, India, SouthAfrica, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia, Lesotho, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Kenya, showing that the journal is attracting not only southern African authorship, but also authorship from across the continent and internationally. The present edition of the journal is also interesting in that three different perspectives stand out, namely methodology, context and quality, perspectives which permeate the journal papers in various ways

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Perspectives on transformations in learning and educatio

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