The NAEE blog has a recent, and rather skeptical, post about a paper in EER. This is:
Fraser J, Gupta R & Krasny ME (2015) Environmental Education Research 21(5) 777-800
I read it when it first emerged, and also wondered how anyone outwith the USA would read it. It's all typically American in both outlook, methodology and conclusions.
I was, of course, disappointed that it did not draw on the insights that Steve Gough and I provided, back in 2003, into who got involved in environmental education and why. This began:
One thing that strikes us every time we attend NAAEE’s annual conference is just what a broad church environmental education is – a church whose congregation and ministers represent many facets of what we might call environmental learning. This we define purposefully broadly as ‘learning which accrues, or is derived, from an engagement with the environment or with environmental ideas’. Such learning can be the outcome from formal or non-formal educational programmes in schools, and/or communities, from designated environmental education interventions, or from personal or incidental learning where no teacher or instructor was involved.
The text which followed set out nine categories of interest which, we said, captured, in a tentative fashion, a range of foci and objectives of those who espouse and promote environmental learning. Clearly, some saw this as rather tongue-in-cheek; others thought it lacking in respect towards our elders and betters – and a great movement. The proof of a paper is always in the reading, however. The citation is:
Scott WAH & Gough SR (2003) Categorizing Environmental Learning; NAAEE Communicator 33.1
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