Changing green subjectivities in outdoor and environmental education: a qualitative study

Abstract

This article draws on a longitudinal qualitative study of Australian tertiary students studying Outdoor and Environmental Education. It draws on the work of Foucault and Darier to consider how ‘environmental governmentality’ shapes the conduct, desires and attitudes of these students over time. Attention is drawn to normalising and disciplinary effects of mainstream environmental discourse alongside an exploration of some of the inconsistencies and ruptures in how participants interact with discourses of environmentalism.

Keywords:

• outdoor and environmental education
• longitudinal study
• Foucault
• governmentality
• subjectivity
• environmentalism

Notes

1. See http://www.wearewhatwedo.org, retrieved August 23, 2006.

2. ‘Active-ish’ is a play on the word ‘activist’ and I take it to mean being active in ways that are viewed as not too extreme.

3. Over the last four decades, it can be seen in statements about environmental education, in environmental education programme goals and in orientations to research in environmental education. For example, in another of the early definitions of Australian environmental education, O'Neill (1970) proposes that environmental education should ‘stimulate a sense of individual responsibility for the physical and aesthetic quality of the total environment’ (p. 38). In the 1980s and 1990s Harold Hungerford and colleagues in the US were influential in producing models for environmental education that focused on changing learner behaviour (see, for example, Hungerford & Volk, 1990; Ramsey & Hungerford, 1989; Sivek & Hungerford, 1989/1990).

4. Technologies or practices of the self became the focus of Foucault's final work, outlined in the three volumes of The History of Sexuality. This does not suggest, however, that Foucault disregards the influence of power in his later work, and his study on government is illustrative of the impossibility of separating these two techniques of power.

5. The OEE programme consists of practical experiences based around canoeing, bushwalking, cross-country skiing and rock climbing. These journey-based experiences promote exploration and connections with natural environments as well as providing opportunity to study environmental issues first hand. The theoretical component of the OEE programme includes a range of conceptual understandings related to, or drawn from, Outdoor Education, Environmental Education, Adventure Education, Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, Cultural Studies and Sociology. The course is strongly influenced by critical pedagogy which seeks to develop a critical environmental consciousness, critical thinking and problem-solving skills, an environmental ethic and political literacy (Fien, 1995, p. 59).