Colombia’s national policy of environmental education: a critical discourse analysis

Abstract

This article explores how an environmental education policy text comes to be constituted by discursive strategies that reproduce or challenge particular ideologies of environmentalism in relation to education. Using a qualitative analysis of discourses in the National Policy of Environmental Education of Colombia (NPEEC), we examine how these can be traced to a range of stakeholders. Unsurprisingly, key findings include that the discourses present in the policy strongly reflect broader policy agendas circulating in the country, such that the NPEEC falls in line with neoliberal policy prescriptions for addressing environmental challenges. The NPEEC also omits and transforms certain discourses from the environmental education researcher community, particularly when these offer critical and alternative viewpoints for tackling environmental issues through education. The article illuminates how these gaps and movements might be a result of global pressure on local governments, and how the contributions of nationally-recognised environmental education research and researchers have been reduced in the text of the NPEEC. We conclude this represents a problematic relation between research and policy, and discuss the features of this ‘disidentification’.

Video Abstract

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Keywords:

• Policy research
• policy analysis
• critical discourse analysis
• environmental education
• policymakers

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999) understand the concept of social practice as a social activity that has oscillation between the perspective of social structure and the perspective of social action and agency (examples could be classroom teaching, television news, family meals, medical consultations).

2 The Dialnet platform is a virtual newspaper and periodical library that contains Hispanic scientific journals and papers.

3 In our analysis, we considered how each theme was used by the authors, which meaning was given to it, and how it was associated with other inductive codes.

4 All the passages referring to the NPEEC were translated by one of the authors of this article.

Additional information

Funding

This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001 (doctoral funding), and process 88881.312004/2018-01 (research funding), and by the Conselho Nacional de Desarrollo Cientifico y Tecnologico CNPq, process number 148873/2016-2 (doctoral funding).

Notes on contributors

María Angélica Mejía-Cáceres

María Angélica Mejía-Cáceres PhD in Sciences and Health Education, Nutes Science and Health Education Institute, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), member of research group “Languages and Media in Science and Health Education at UFRJ, and Science, Education and Diversity at Universidad del Valle, Colombia. [email protected], https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3486-1952

Alejandra Huérfano

Alejandra Huerfano Master in Environmental Sciences and conservation, Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability (NUPEM), Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, [email protected]

Alan Reid

Alan Reid Professor at Faculty of Education, Monash University. He edits the international research journal, Environmental Education Research, and publishes regularly on environmental and sustainability education (ESE) and their research. Recent examples include editing Environmental Education: critical concepts in the environment, which reviews 50 years of activity in this area, and Curriculum and Environmental Education: Perspectives, Priorities and Challenges. Alan's interests in research and service focus on growing traditions, capacities and the impact of ESE research. A key vehicle for this is his work with the Global Environmental Education Partnership, and via eePRO Research and Evaluation. Find out more via social media, pages or tags for eerjournal, [email protected],  http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2954-6424

Laísa María Freire

Laísa María Freire Professor at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. PhD in Sciences and Health Education, Institute of Biology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, [email protected], https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4573-0969