Preamble

This Special Issue marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of The Journal of Environmental Education, the first scholarly journal in the field of environmental education (EE). Our intent was to first acknowledge what has been learned from those 50 years of EE research, represented by what has been published in the JEE as well as research published elsewhere. Our second and most important objective was to offer a means by reflecting back to explore new ways of looking forward to where the field might and should be heading.

Given the critical state of the planet with the current emergency issues of climate change and biodiversity loss - along with ongoing ecological, political, social and economic injustices and the polarization of politics and ideologies - researchers are facing unpreceded issues of urgency, complexity, uncertainty and contestation. These global and local contexts present challenges as well as opportunities for environmental and sustainability education research. The roles of education and research in responding to these challenges are being questioned with growing calls in the literature for disrupting and transforming current theories, practices and structures (Smith, Fraser, & Corbett, 2017). Disruptions also can produce openings for deep conversations and debates that conjure alternative possibilities of thinking, being and acting that can lead to transformations of perspectives, practices and praxis.

Accordingly, an international group of leading scholars with diverse theoretical perspectives on and approaches to environmental and sustainability education (ESE) research, who either have lived the history of the field or are already moving into the projected future of the field, were invited to contribute papers to this special issue. In identifying our invitation list, we sought scholars from a range of broad to specific theoretical and methodological perspectives as well as those associated with more specific issues in the field.

As a history of papers published in the JEE reveals the dominance of a focus, at least from the mid-1970s until the current decade, on local program evaluations and relational knowledge-attitudes-behavior explorations from a positivistic paradigm of quantitative methods, we first sought more direct connections to educational research of wider socio-cultural relevance. This encompasses larger discussions of knowledge (i.e., epistemology) and ontological framings that integrate social theory, worldviews and enabling spaces for critical reflexivity of not only scholars but also participant practitioners (Lotz-Sisitka, 2009; Hart, this issue). The emergence of qualitative approaches to social science research beyond positivist, post-positivist, constructivist and critical methodologies suggested the importance of including post-structuralism, post-qualitative inquiry, the new materialism and the politics of inquiry. The historically marginalized perspectives of ecofeminism and Indigeneity and the environment warranted attention as did (critical) place pedagogies and socio-ecological learning. Finally, we wished to broaden the range of socio-ecological issues from local to glocal and identified in discussions with invited authors the climate emergency, human-nonhuman animal relationships, and the implications of cyber space for ESE. Fortunately, ten of the 12 scholars we invited were able to accept our invitation. Unfortunately, two outstanding scholars had to reluctantly decline owing to facing other major demands resulting in the late loss of a critical realism perspective and an important socio-cultural historical framing of the field.

The invited authors were asked to draw from their own theoretical and/or methodological and/or (non)representational perspective(s) to first explore the extent to which current research, theory and/or practice of environmental and sustainability education has and/or has not been advanced over the past 50 years. And second to consider what do current global, regional and local historical and contemporary contexts and issues now demand of our research? Most importantly, authors were asked to critically situate their work historically in exploring future directions for ESE research by addressing the following related questions:

How should the field of ESE research and practice respond to the ecological and socio-cultural imperatives around the globe in view of the (post)human and more-than-human condition?

How might we (re)think about EE/ESE scholarship in view of current challenges and critiques of the field?

In addressing these questions, they were invited to (re)consider the scope and focus of their accumulating work and to respond to hard questions about how we can work “back to the future.” In sum, we invited reflections on what needs to be going on in the JEE and the field broadly in ways that address complex issues of what is (troubling) and what is (really) going on and should be going on in the field of environmental education research?

We hope that readers will be inspired to respond to the perspectives, ideas and approaches represented in this collection and engage in further debate by generating their own critically reflexive papers to submit to the journal and thereby further strengthen its contribution to the ESE field.