Why ontology matters to reviewing environmental education research

Abstract

This paper responds to a keynote paper presented by William Scott at the 2007 World Environmental Education Congress held in Durban, South Africa. The keynote address reviewed 30 years of environmental education research. In this response to William Scott's paper I contemplate the way in which environmental education research may enable reflexivity in modernity and develop knowledge that can serve as cultural mediator between individual and society. Through emphasizing ontology, I consider the reality of global knowledge production in relation to the way in which ontology may influence the reasons how and why we come to do particular forms of research, providing an ontological reference for the ever‐expanding pluralism that characterizes the field of environmental education research. The paper comments on various aspects of the Scott paper, but presents an argument for not only valuing pluralism, methodological experimentation and ‘reaching out’, but for embracing the cosmopolitan implications of wider ontological referents of environmental concerns in environmental education research. The paper argues that research in environmental education ought to become ontologically defensible at both local and global scales.

Keywords:

• ontology
• cultural reflexivity
• critical realism
• research links