Looking toward the blue sky: Environmental education researchers' experience, influences, and aspirations

abstract

Environmental education (EE) researchers hail from diverse disciplines and sociocultural contexts, work in a range of settings, and envision various outcomes. Desiring to better understand their backgrounds, interests, and aspirations for the field, we surveyed EE researchers to explore their theoretical and educational influences and what they find compelling for future research, in light of societal trends. Respondents (n = 86) observed a connection between EE research and the increasingly global scale of environmental issues, rural-to-urban population shift, and emphasis on health and wellbeing. They described a desire to pursue and communicate about research relevant to academics, practitioners, and the broader public.

Acknowledgments

We appreciate thoughtful feedback from reviewers and colleagues. We are grateful to the environmental education researchers who participated in the survey and shared their time and thoughts with us. We appreciate Wendi Hoover's and Noelle Wyman Roth's editorial assistance.

^*Any publications in the reference list preceded by an asterisk refer to those named as influential by more than one respondent and listed in Table 4.

Notes

1 These lists may (and most likely do) overlap in membership, as many EE researchers are members of several—and potentially all—of these groups. We assume, though, that the same individual would not have elected to complete the survey more than once and, therefore, that each response represents a unique individual.

2 A matrix query allows stratification of qualitative data by quantitative or attribute variables.

3 We report on all 86 responses throughout this article, unless otherwise noted.

4 The number of researchers consistently active in the NAAEE Research Commission over the 5 years prior to the survey ranged between 50 and 75 (personal communication, J. Braus, 2014); the number of researchers consistently active in the AERA EE-SIG has remained around 50 (personal communication, D. Williams, 2014).

5 We did not include the role “Nonprofit researcher or employee” in the researcher group because we were unable to determine, from the data collected, whether the respondent was primarily a researcher or other type of employee.

6 We generated the original journal list through discussion groups with EE researchers in 2010 and 2011. The list is intended to reflect peer-reviewed publications to which EE researchers may be most likely to submit manuscripts.