This workshop aims to be “about”, “in” and “for” environmental and sustainability education research (cf. Gough, 1997). The workshop aims to challenge education researchers to reflect (“about”) on the links between research, learning and sustainability (Sund & Lysgaard, 2013), while actively engaging in a methodological dance of participatory research (“in” and “for”).

Various people have reviewed the history of research related to environmental and sustainability education research (Robottom, 2002: Stevenson et al. 2013), and have long drawn attention to the problems of globalized ideas within the education (Brookes, 2002) while the same forces act on the process of research. There are 24 official languages in the European Union with many additional languages spoken. However, English is the dominant language for publishing, international conferences and the primary reference language for education and research policy across Europe. This workshop focuses at the level of language (and related cultural understanding) to explore where and how language exerts globalizing pressures in research (Harris, 2001).

Understanding how well our own espoused theories are manifest in practice requires exploration of our internal adoption of epistemological perspectives or paradigms (Guba & Lincoln, 2008) which are bound to be multiple and complex in the type of interdisciplinarity and diversity of education research practice. Transparency also requires a clear understanding of external pressures that create powerful and controlling but often invisible norms such as “faculty productivity”. There are “undertheorized relationship between the politics of academic research projects and the broader political movements with which they engage” (Mountz, Miyares, Wright & Bailey, 2003, p. 29). Reflection and continual negotiation regarding the epistemologies in use in all steps of research is necessary in order to be aware of the differences in deep understandings and assumptions (Miller et al, 2008). However, once conflicting epistemologies are identified, researchers need to take the more difficult step of the seemingly impossible incorporation of contradicting realities. This is particularly difficult because knowing and ways of understanding knowledge are manifest within institutional and social structures as well as language (Neilson, Cardwell & Bulhão Pato, 2012) and not easily disrupted (Neilson, 2009).

Experimental works are useful for taking into account issues of representation, legitimation and politics in research (McKenzie, 2005). Arts-based methodologies provide creative avenues to disrupt imbalances and injustices. Philip Payne (2005) challenges the limitations of textual discourse as a way of knowing; he focuses on “being, doing and becoming a relational, social and ecological ‘self’” (p. 415, emphasis in original) and suggests that strong cultural production constrains these qualities. Good research practice includes reflection on the assumptions of the research including the meaning of words used, but words are not always translatable (Crane, Lombard & Tenz, 2009). As well, many metaphors related to environment and sustainability are bantered sloppily in public media. Framing, metaphors and narratives are important for meaning making (Lakoff, 2010) and are particularly important to deconstruct when challenging dominant views that may have been taken as common sense (Knoespel, 1991; Stone-Mediatore, 2003), as well as inviting critical reflection on the very story being told. It is for this reason, that the workshop uses creative arts-based methods to explore the power of language and text.

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