Listening to environmentally conscious teachers : stories of philosophy, pedagogy and practice in environmental education

Concern is rising around the world regarding the intensifying effects of climate change, which include severe bushfires, heatwaves, droughts, flooding, rising oceans, biodiversity loss, food instability, and displacement. Despite mounting opposition to environmental inaction, in primary schools there remains great confusion around if, how and why to enact environmental education. Environmental education is considered on the margins of mainstream practice, and gaps between environmental education theory and practice endure. Notably, engagement with community partners to enrich environmental education is inconsistent, and in-depth school-based explorations of partnership opportunities are limited in the literature. In addition, rich understandings and experiential insights from practising teachers are undervalued in environmental education research and practice.
In response, this research sought to listen attentively to environmentally conscious teachers regarding their environmental education efforts. This was achieved through an exploratory, qualitative, empirical narrative inquiry study of 11 teachers��� philosophies, pedagogies, and practices. Immersive visits enabled in-depth participant observations in the teachers��� classrooms, and the teachers also shared their stories via ecological autobiographies, face-to-face semi-structured interviews and participant journals. The research findings focus on insights from the four main study participants.
In addition to thorough exploration of philosophies, pedagogies and practices, a practical, contextually-relevant theoretical foundation for environmental education was developed during the study. The theoretical assemblage draws upon posthumanism and community psychology to enrich and extend social ecology. In particular, the theoretical assemblage accentuates the inextricable entanglement of humans and nonhumans, and emphasises the importance of human-nonhuman community partnerships to enrich environmental education. The need to encourage children���s connection as nature, rather than with nature was a key finding. Shifting attention beyond the humancentric focus prevalent in mainstream education is a central contribution of this research.
Importantly, the research also presents relevant, real-world implications for practising teachers. By weaving the teachers��� stories together with existing rigorous research, the findings contribute to deeper understandings of holistic, place-responsive, community-connected environmental education. The teachers��� stories provide robust, tangible evidence of effective ways to enact holistic environmental education in schools. In particular, the teachers��� stories inform: linking learning with children���s lived experiences; attuning to place; engaging with experiential pedagogies; nurturing agency and active participation; embracing storytelling; enacting arts-based environmental education and inquiry-based learning; pursuing kids teaching kids opportunities; and striving towards whole-school approaches. Their stories also contribute rich understandings around diverse community partnership opportunities, as well as positive impacts and challenges of engaging with community partners to enrich environmental education.