Animals in environmental education research

Abstract

Over the past few decades, the increase in public and scholarly attention to human-animal relations has inspired an animal turn in a number of academic disciplines including environmental education research. This paper reviews the literature on animals in environmental education with respect to its theoretical foundations in critical pedagogy, ecofeminism and posthumanism, considers empirical work on formal, nonformal and informal learning spaces and discusses the implications of an animal-focused paradigm for teaching and research. In the conclusion the author suggests some areas for further inquiries from her own research and teaching experience.

Keywords:

• Animals
• anthropocentrism
• environmental education research

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the invaluable comments and suggestions that I received from Connie Russell and the anonymous reviewers on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

1. The term ‘nonhuman animal’ seeks to question the simple human-animal divide and stresses that the ‘heterogeneous multiplicity of living’ (Derrida 2008, 31) includes homo sapiens. Further, as one referee points out, the term ‘nonhuman’ defines other animals ex negativo. The terminology thus does not solve the dualism in a satisfactory way, because it still opposes nonhuman and human animals. However, I will retain the term as it expresses awareness of the contradiction in pitting humans against animals (cf. Shapiro 2008, 7).