A Feeling for the Environment: Emotion Talk in/for the Pedagogy of Public Environmental Education

Abstract

Emotions are important aspects in/for the pedagogy of environmental education (EE). However, the literature on the relationship between emotions and EE has not explored how emotion talk furnishes teaching identity claims and mediates instruction in/about the environment. Therefore, the present study draws on two ethnographic case studies to investigate the rhetorical and situational use of emotion discursive categories in interviews and authentic EE learning situations. Our findings suggest that rather than just being an outcome of effective instructional models designed to instill an environmental consciousness in students, emotion discourses are means to help account for and concretely realize the pedagogy of EE.

Keywords:

• case study
• discourse analysis
• emotions
• environmental education
• ethnography
• learning and instruction
• nonformal and formal learning settings

Notes

1. An activity system refers to human activities in general and comprises a group of interrelated elements that are inherent to these actions—for example, the interactions under study here. The essential task is to present situations as systemic wholes, where tools, division of labor, rules, community, outcomes, subject, and the object of the activity are all considered to be inseparable from one another (e.g., Lee, 2006).

2. Pseudonyms are used throughout to preserve participants’ anonymity.

3. Ingold (1992, p. 44) distinguishes the concepts of nature—an objectified notion of the physical world available only to the detached observer (“reality of”)—and environment—a more constituting perspective on the organism or person whose environment it is (“reality for”). Nevertheless, here they are used interchangeably.