Sensing Environmental Education Research

Abstract

The field of environmental education research has been moving away from scientistic and positivistic discourses for some time now (Environmental Education Research, 2000; Hart & Nolan, 1999). However, it has been noted that the meta-discourse about this research continues to draw on their framings, registers, and lexicons (Hart, 2000; Marcinkowski, 2000; Smith-Sebasto, 2000). Poststructuralist and critical approaches to discourse analysis highlight the constraints and possibilities in such discourse, including how we make sense of claims about the quality of research. With this in mind, the paperexplores the meta-discourse about environmental education research, using "the science and art" of imaging and remote sensing of the environment to illustrate the forms and functions of techno-scientific language in this field. In so doing, the paper discusses a series of observations about interpretation and quality in environmental education research discourse, and constraints and possibilities in relation to the meta-discourse.