The 'Thalweg' of Currents: 'Naturalist' Environmental Education

Abstract

This paper aims to (re)consider environmental education (EE) through the lens of a mystery/knowledge continuum. It revisits the currents of EE identified by Lucie Sauvé and juxtaposes these with a typology of the senses of mystery. Philosophically and theoretically informed, the paper concludes that a naturalist current of EE optimally invokes a skeptical-sacred sense of mystery, where knowledge is in relation to mystery. A naturalistic current of EE offers a distinct way of considering reality, which has implications for EE and its constituents: thinking, pedagogy, learning, and curriculum. Of Sauvé’s fifteen established currents of EE, we argue that a naturalist current could serve as the thalweg, or valley-way, of currents of EE for metaphoric, etymological, philosophica (epistemological and ontological), and educational reasons.