Where are children and young people in environmental education research?

Cutter-Mackenzie, Amy

In 1984, the Australian Journal of Environmental Education commenced. At that time I was 6 years old, in my first year of primary school at Tieri State School in Central Western Queensland. I knew nothing of the Australian Journal of Environmental Education (AJEE), or environmental education for that matter (at least not in a formal sense). In many respects, I was perhaps part of the intended audience (the future generation). As was the case with many children of my generation (Generation X, on the cusp of Generation Y), environmental education at school was largely incidental. Having grown up in a mining town (from 1983 to 1991), environmental conservation was certainly not a welcomed perspective. All the same though, my childhood was free, untamed and unsupervised in the Australian bush. It was that pastime or playtime where my environmental consciousness began its emergence.

Skimming back over the 1980s volumes of the AJEE, it becomes clear that children and young people's voices are missing. It appears that children and young people were taken for granted in the preponderance of articles. The focus appeared to ricochet between school-based environmental education (from a teacher's perspective) to deep ecologies (nature studies) to early research positionings (research agendas). It was not until the early 1990s that children and young people became part of the AJEE discourse, cognisant with two distinct and significant developments: (1) the international and national recognition of a human-induced environmental crisis (or ecological crises drawing upon Orr's work); and (2) the acknowledgment of a new sociology of childhood (aligned with the children's rights movement). By way of example, in Robottom's 1991 editorial he referred to the 'Greenhouse Action for the Nineties' Conference, which considered the theme (among others): 'And how we will rear our children--Community Outreach and Public Education' (p. 1). Robottom's 1991 editorial and a consequent smattering of articles thereafter focused on children and young people brought an additional emphasis (albeit somewhat minor) to the AJEE (Connell, Fien, Skyes, & Yencken, 1988; Wals & Evert, 1992).

Payne's (1998) seminal article 'Children's Conceptions of Nature' considered children's views about nature and environment. He eloquently argued:

   There is a lack of consideration in environmental education theory
   and research practice about the children who are the subjects of
   environmental education. There is a need for teachers and
   curriculum designers to pay much attention to the routines,
   patterns and rhythms of children's daily lives--their individual
   and collective ontology requires explanation, or study or what it
   is for them 'to be in the world'. Learners already have a rich
   working knowledge of the social and environmental circumstances and
   living patterns in which they find themselves, including concepts
   like 'nature' or 'the environment' which are so central to
   environmental education. (p. 20)

Payne (1998) signalled the dawn of the impact of the technological revolution on children and young people's experience in/of nature and environment (at least in the Australian context). At the time, he cited CD-Roms, the internet and television as high technologies, but perhaps Payne (among many other researchers) did not fully appreciate the social and cultural complexity of the technology that was yet to come, namely the advent of social media, smart technologies and virtual worlds. He also signalled that 'Children's lives are hardly natural anymore' (p. 20), again in the Australian context. While this was before Louv's (2005) infamous 'Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit-Disorder', Chawla (1999, 2002), Sobel (1996), Kahn (1999), and Kahn and Kellert (2002) echoed similar arguments to Payne (1998). In more recent times, Kahn and Hasbach (2013) contended:

   Many people who currently advocate for the importance of nature in
   human lives focus on what's close at hand: domestic, nearby,
   everyday nature. It might be a local park, one's own garden, one's
   dog, a nearby walking trail, or birds finding sustenance in urban
   feeders. But domestic is only part of what we need. The other part
   is wild nature. For as a species we came of age in a natural world
   far wilder than today, and much of the need for wildness still
   exists within us, body and mind. (p. iv)

Kahn and Hasbach (2013) opened up a dialogue focused on children's wild experiences or lack thereof. Such dialogue is not overly visible in the AJEE. What is even less visible though, are children and young people's direct voices. In other words, where are children positioned as the researchers--as experts of their own lives--in the AJEE? This is juxtaposed against a wider research trend where educational researchers have made significant headway in involving children as participants and/or co-researchers (Bell, 2008; Morrow, 2008; Skelton, 2008). Indeed, Flutter and Ruddock (2004) noted that 'there is clear evidence that the political and social climate has begun to warm to the principle of involving children and young people [in research]' (p. 139). Despite such acknowledgment, 'research agendas involving children are still often conceived of and led by adults, particularly as it concerns environmental education and its research' (Barratt Hacking, Cutter-Mackenzie, & Barratt, 2013). Barratt Hacking et al. (2013) challenge:

   We challenge environmental education researchers to further
   consider, discuss and critique children's roles in research. We
   propose that this debate focuses on the potential of children as
   collaborators in research rather than as objects of investigation
   or discussion. The research methodology 'children as active
   researchers' has received limited attention in environmental
   education research. Researchers, teachers, politicians, policy
   makers and curriculum developers demonstrate concern about the
   sustainability of children's futures and identify children as
   primary participants in environmental education. Nevertheless,
   children are not often positioned as researchers who can bring
   valid and new views or voices to educational practice and policy.
   (p. 456)

While slow to mount traction, children and young people are becoming more vocal through social movements such as the 'Australian Youth Climate Coalition' (see http://www.aycc.org.au/). However, the crossover from such activism to research is, by and large, absent in the traditional genres of environmental education and its research. The latter is generally 'adult business'. How can we change this, not only in the AJEE, but in environmental education research more broadly? Perhaps one day, not only will children and young people be authors of original research, but possibly a child or young person will edit a child-focussed environmental education research journal, perhaps even a part of the Australian Journal of Environmental Education. What a wild and crazy idea that is!

doi 10.1017/aee.2014.32

References

Barratt Hacking, E., Cutter-Mackenzie, A., & Barratt, R. (2013). Children as researchers: The potential of environmental education research involving children. In R. Stevenson, A. Wals, M. Brody, & J. Dillon (Eds.), The handbook of research on environmental education (pp. 438-458). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

Bell, N. (2008). Ethics in child research: Rights, reason and responsibilities. Children's Geographies, 5(1), 7-20.

Chawla, L. (1999). Life paths into effective environmental action. The Journal of Environmental Education, 31(1), 15-26.

Chawla, L. (2002). Growing up in an urbanizing world. Paris: UNESCO Publishing.

Connell, S., Fien, J., Skyes, H., & Yencken, D. (1988). Young people and the environment in Australia: Beliefs, knowledge, commitment and educational implications. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 14(1), 39-48.

Flutter, J., & Rudduck, J. (2004). Consulting pupils: What's in it for schools? London: Routledge Falmer.

Kahn, P. (1999). The Human Relationship with Nature: Development and Culture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Kahn, P., & Hasbach, P. (2013). The rediscovery of the wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kahn, P, & Kellert, S. (Eds.). (2002). Children and nature: Psychological, sociocultural, and evolutionary investigations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Louv, R. (2005). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature deficit disorder. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books

Morrow, V. (2008). Ethical dilemmas in research with children and young people about their social environments. Children's Geographies, 5(1), 49-61.

Orr, D. W. (1992). Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World. Albany: State University of New York.

Payne, P (1998). Childrens' conceptions of nature. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 14, 19-26.

Robottom, I. (1991). Editorial. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 7(1), i-iv.

Skelton, T. (2008). Research with children and young people: exploring the tensions between ethics, competence and participation. Children's Geographies, 6(1), 21-36.

Sobel, D. (1996). Beyond ecophobia: Reclaiming the heart in nature education. Great Barrington, MA: The Orion Society and The Myrin Institute.

Wals, A., & Evert, J. (1992). Young adolescents' perceptions of environmental issues: Implications for environmental education in urban settings. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 8(1), 45-58.

Amy Cutter-Mackenzie

Southern Cross University, Gold Coast Campus, Queensland, Australia