Children’s research into their local environment: Stevenson’s gap, and possibilities for the curriculum

Abstract

The article critically explores the conditions necessary for children to be fully involved in developing a community‐related school curriculum, doing this through a critical reappraisal of the gap between the philosophy of environmental education and its practice in schools highlighted by Stevenson in 1987. This article draws on a recent UK Economic and Social Science Research Council project [RES 221‐25‐0036]: Listening to Children—Environmental Perspectives and the School Curriculum (L2C). This one‐year, participatory research initiative studied children’s local environmental perspectives and was undertaken by the authors, in partnership with teachers, 11–12‐year‐old school children and their 17‐year‐old mentors, and community representatives, in a secondary school serving an English urban community on the edge of a large conurbation. The research focused on (1) how children perceive and act within their local environment and community, (2) how they make sense of this in relation both to their lives and to the school curriculum, and (3) how schools might enable children’s local environmental perspectives to become a part of their curriculum experience. The article is in two parts; the first details the research and reviews its success in bringing children’s local experience and knowledge into the curriculum. The second then uses the L2C experience as a lens through which to examine the environmental education philosophy–practice gap within English schools, commenting on what has changed over the twenty years since Bob Stevenson’s original article. It ends with a discussion of the current opportunities for environmental education.