Environmental education research - milestones and celebrations

By the end of 2019, Environmental Education Research will have published 25 volumes of studies from those researching the fields of environmental education and sustainability education.

Volume 24 typifies the most recent configuration of its ‘output’, in that it offered 12 issues featuring over 100 quality studies drawn from all ‘corners’ of the globe. The overwhelming majority of these articles were original studies on a wide range of topics that either fall within or help stretch the aims and scope of the journal. While as typically featured in our most cited and most read papers, each volume includes literature reviews, analyses and commentaries, including on the state of the art in particular regions or substantive matters (e.g. in Volume 24: on botanic gardens, in issue 8¹; the Benelux region, issue 9²; and Brazil, issue 10³). Last but by no means least, the journal continues to publish summaries of recent doctoral theses, and reviews, symposia and perspectives on academic topics, books and events relevant to the work of environmental and sustainability education and their research.

Given these features, the journal's 'metrics' could suggest that it has reached maturity in the realms of academic publishing and its immediate journal peer group. Yet in saying that, it should also be acknowledged that any journal risks becoming ‘middle-aged’, if not out of touch or step, with new as well as enduring generational concerns. So we remain mindful of our relative youthfulness and collective experience, alongside our corresponding roles in establishing, responding to and furthering debates about how to conceptualise and demonstrate quality, relevance and impact in what we publish as studies that advance understandings of environmental and sustainability education. These include the challenges and issues we all face, close to home and further afield, as well as in working within and across generations of research and the motivators, enablers and constraints of these (from the last decade or so, examples from this journal include: Ardoin, Clark, and Kelsey 2013; Blewitt 2011; Blum et al. 2013; de Carvalho et al. 2019; Davis 2009; Duhn, Malone, and Tesar 2017; Fraser, Gupta, and Krasny 2015; Hursh, Henderson, and Greenwood 2015; Levy and Zint 2013; McKenzie 2009; Van Poeck and Lysgaard 2016; Rickinson 2006; Russell 2006; Tuck, McKenzie, and McCoy 2014; Varela-Losada et al. 2016; Wals 2010).

That reflection on these roles and features are some of the journal’s key characteristics—and have remained so, especially by not limiting the kind of work cited above to articles and editorials in ‘special issues’—is fundamentally contingent on the community of researchers, scholars and readers around the world who have supported the journal throughout the past 25 years. From hundreds to now thousands from many more countries than its earliest volumes, we are both humbled and pleased to know researchers and educators, as well as their students and colleagues, have variously supported the journal's mission, found its articles of use, and helped shape what it has become.

Whether it is through (a) submitting original manuscripts to working up ideas for special issues and collections, (b) embracing the bread and butter business of a journal by refereeing and reviewing as much as demonstrating such scholarly virtues as reciprocity, generosity and reflexivity during those activities, or (c) injecting and providing new forms of leadership though serving and reworking the business prosecuted by the editorial board, we also do well to take a step back from all this fairly regularly during the current volume, considering these and other aspects to ‘the journeys’ and 'destinations' various folk have in mind for this journal. Doing so, we might start by recognising it has been an incredible period of learning and re-learning what the core and additional activities of this and other journals are, should be, and might/must become, and what talk of service, ambition, change, participation, contribution and impact might all have to play in this.

To illustrate, take the saying, it takes a community to raise a child. And a journal, we might wonder, with neighbours and (critical) friends, close and extended relations, visitors and elders (and many others) each playing their role on particular occasions? Equally and on behalf of the editorial board and publishers, I (and we) remain deeply indebted and appreciative to those colleagues, newer and long standing, relatively known and unknown, if not past and present, who have made the journal’s contributions and achievements possible, and what they are, both within and beyond the field of environmental and sustainability education. While it should also be acknowledged that it is these and other communities of scholars and colleagues—but especially the senior and past editors, long-serving board members and most recently, associate editors—who have provided critical feedback and challenge to the work and vision for the journal. Sometimes that happens behind ‘closed doors' in board meetings or via correspondence, but increasingly it happens at public events such as research symposia, invited keynotes and workshops, or through various publishing projects and collaborations within and beyond ‘the field’.

So if this journal did indeed proceed through ‘toddling’ days, ‘teenage years’ and into its ‘adulthood’, as a reminder of its beginnings, let's recall it was founded as part of the fledgling work of what became the Centre for Research in Education and the Environment at the University of Bath, in the mid-1990s, by William Scott and Chris Oulton. The three issues that formed volume 1 in 1995 contained 26 articles, and for those of you who have a copy to hand, they provide an interesting snapshot of the what’s as well as the who’s of the field, by way of their topics, authors, referees and editorial board, book reviewers and conference report writers. With support from Bath’s Department of Education for an editorial office (where it is still nearly ‘based’, via Claire Drake, our longest serving editorial assistant) and from its publishers—Carfax at that time, and most prominently, through the erstwhile commitment to this field of Ian White, and more recently Alex Lazzari, through Routledge and Taylor & Francis—some of the key drivers and regulative ideals for the journal were to create and continue to be a venue for publishing quality, rigorous and boundary-pushing studies of environmental education.⁴

Unsurprisingly, academic publishing landscapes and industries have experienced some considerable shifts since those early days, as has academia as the main forum and mouthpiece of publically-funded and personal-professional driven studies (e.g. via doctoral and postdoctoral inquiries). So we must also recognise that while the journal’s ‘editors-in-chief’ have undertaken various forms of stocktaking on aspects of this in relation to the work of the journal and field fairly regularly (for the last decade or so, see Reid and Scott 2006, 2008, 2012; Reid 2009, 2013, 2016, 2018; Reid and Dillon 2016; Scott 2009), such commentaries and analyses have their ‘shelf lives’ too. These include on what research topics best represent the field’s ‘low hanging fruit’ to ‘harder to reach varieties’, and what we might learn and do about its blank, blind, bald and bright spots in inquiry and research development, including their evolution and distribution, disruption and dissolution. Sometimes these seem to require a refocusing of methodologies or an updating of methods; at other times, a change of stance if not farewells as much as welcomes to particular research questions, ideas, philosophies, practices, researchers and groupings, debates and relations.

On the publishing front, and again in broad terms, academics and commentators on these and cognate fields appear increasingly aware of the economic, ecological, psychological and sociocultural forces leading towards and away from scholarly cohesion and fragmentation, as much as continuities and discontinuities with historic to contemporary interests and claims as to what the fields of environmental and sustainability education are (really?) about—and for. Sometimes this is accompanied by that most troublesome of phenomena, ‘academic tribalism’, if not ‘territorialisation’ to create as much as forestall deconstructions, contiguities or confusions. Having published over 150 issues by the end of this year, with over 1000 articles in Environmental Education Research, it is also clear that some studies appear to have become most notable for depositing as much as communicating research, tracing as they do various acts and signallings of focus, belonging and affiliation, groupings and regroupings, progressions and digressions in thought and careers (and their disintegration or reconfiguration?). We may even suspect authorial practices of 'silo-ing' and/or muck 'spreading' via a research study in and across the researching of environmental and sustainability education (see Becher and Trowler 2001; Sternberg 2014)!

Yet from the experience and perspective this can bring to those working in an editorial office, trends and fashions also seem to intersect with parallel pulses happening elsewhere. These include in the various ups and downs to the ways that national, regional or professional association-based journals have fared, alongside changes and ruptures in editorial teams and their direction and representativeness in the field’s journals, if not shifts in publishing funds, formats and priorities. The latter, for example, can preoccupy a lot of attention (maybe disproportionally), be they on institutional and personal funding for open access, to covert and/or ethical initiatives reflective of admixtures of commercial, community and careerist values in publishing rapidly, often or for ‘free’, or in strategies and tactics for 'sharing', 'citing' and 'authorship' of publications. Associated issues arise from, for example, social media and repositories that may seem to blur copyright and fair use considerations (if not undermine the role of libraries or contradict values of ‘slower scholarship’ and 'contributorship'), the pursuit of instantly downloadable/shareable/hashtag-able articles, or the deliberate exclusion or inclusion of particular work in what's discussed or referenced - themes we have addressed regularly on the journal's social media channels and in workshops in recent years.

But before potentially getting side-tracked by these issues, we note that throughout this year of commemorating 25 years of the journal, we will explore deeper aspects to these initial observations through feature editorials from our board members. Touching on these and related matters, we hope they broaden the voices and insights possible for current and future stock-taking and debate, as well as service ongoing conversations about directions and renewal of the fields of research and practice that the journal is able to serve.

As well as documenting and discussing aspects of the background, key features and foci of Environmental Education Research, in subsequent editorials we will invite you to consider how you might become further involved, or work in other ways to support developing research about/for environmental and sustainability education, putting research to quality use, critically and creatively. While as another way to celebrate this particular milestone, rather than publish a ‘double special issue’ as we did after 10 years (see Reid and Scott 2008), various ‘commemorative collections’ curated by board members will also be made available based on the journal’s archives, illustrating and challenging the work of this field.

Finally, and primarily on an aesthetic note, in 2019 the journal will have completed a production-related project, to update and reformat fonts, layouts, and (quelle surprise) covers and iconography. More importantly, as a focus for the second half of the year, we will have our next consultation on the general guidelines for the journal, 5 years on from those embodied in the current version (available at https://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pdf/ceer-general-guidelines.pdf). This reflexive exercise invites the editorial board, its advisors and critical friends to guide and ensure the journal remains fundamentally ‘fit for purpose’—and we seek readers' participation in this exercise too. In brief, we will be exploring if we have the necessary values, projects, structures, people and processes to hand that ensure it addresses the needs of the community and stakeholders it serves, at what is now a quarter of a century on from its inception.

In closing, I trust it is clear to both occasional and regular readers of our volumes that the editorial office for Environmental Education Research is committed to sustaining and developing a ‘broad church’ of research and scholarship about environmental and sustainability education. By this phrase, we mean, we endeavour to uphold the values and practices of liberality, inclusivity, plurality and criticality in outlook and expectation of manuscripts, even as we remain unsettled by and opposed to ‘sectarianism’ in its academic forms. [While to stretch the analogy further, we will continue to avoid providing any platform to self-appointed ‘gurus’, ‘fundamentalisms’ or ‘priests' thrust(ing?) upon its ‘members’ ... And yes, we all need to continue to engage with what movements like #TimesUp mean for this field of inquiry, including in its journals.]

It remains somewhat commonplace to end an editorial by stating that theoretical and empirical viewpoints are never the whole truth and other perspectives are available, that research is often messy and complex (just like reality), and that interdisciplinary and contemporary problems are seldom addressed well by resorting to self-limiting, paradigmatic thinking—even if we have to start and stumble from somewhere to give us at least some sense of a point of departure, assurance and motivation. In response though, we believe a journal such as this will do well to maintain an agnostic, open and disciplined space, rather than risk becoming one that is inaccessible or doctrinaire as to what needs researching about environmental and sustainability education, empirically and theoretically. As we discuss in our next editorial, at the heart of such a view is pursuing the perennial question of what can be reasonably claimed to be worth investigating or pursuing, and has been found to be so, in maintaining a commitment to fostering and supporting ongoing research and development despite the urgency of these times.

A dream, perhaps, to end. Imagine the decades beyond the conclusion of Agenda 2030, or even more simply, 25 more years of this journal. What would it take so that those primarily interested in what this field and its researchers have had to offer—and accomplished—are historians and innovators?

Alan Reid
Melbourne, Australia
[email protected]
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2954-6424

Notes

1 See Sanders, Ryken, and Stewart (2018).

2 See Van Poeck, Wals, and König (2018).

3 See Thiemann, de Carvalho, and Torres. (2019).

4 This was particularly pertinent for those working in Europe who weren’t well served by existing Anglosphere (mainly North American, Australasian, Southern African) outlets from that time, while an example of its most contemporary form is the healthy link the journal maintains with the European Educational Research Association’s Network 30 on Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (NW30), or more recently, researchers in the Asia-Pacific region.