Thispapercommunicationis linked part of to the Environmental Education Research’s special issue, ‘Critical investigations of the Research-Policy Relationship in Environmental and Sustainability Education’a paper submitted that presents an Analysis of the National Policy of Environmental Education of Colombia. Our intention is to contribute to research and policy through our analysisand to providingethe possibility of ‘disidentification’ - the effect of working on and against prevailing practices of ideological subjection. As Ball (2006, p. 20) suggests, “the point of theory and of intellectual endeavour struggle to reveal and undermine what is most invisible and insidious in prevailing practices.”
Therefore, this paper communication focuseson the relationship between researchers and policymakers materialized in texts that manifest ideologies and power relations. Our aim is to identify discursive markers of researchers in the National Policy of Environmental Education in Colombia (NPEEC).
Colombia is committed to instilling and promoting environmental education (EE). To achieve this goal, Colombia is trying to follow international guidelines. Since 1994, this country has included environmental education in school curriculum and made it obligatory. In addition, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Environment created a document to provide guidelines for the process of environmental education at different levels and in various contexts, viz. the NPEEC..
If we consider the NPEEC as a text, we assume that it will be interpreted and translated by social actors of educational institutions such as teachers, policymakers, and researchers (Gee, Hull & Lankshear, 1996, in Ball, 2015). Moreover, while the policy was being drafted, many researchers’ discourses were interpreted and translated. This implies that EE and other educative processes have ethical dimensions, ideologies and power relations, and that EE in Colombia is guided by “legislative texts that shape the proposed policy and are the initial basis for policies to be put into practice” (Ball & Bowe, 1992). We agree with Ball (2006), who states that it is necessary to identify if the researcher's discourses are located or dislocated in schools and educational institutions with respect to their physical and cultural environment. First, according to Ball (2006), the policy needs to assume local conditions because they have particular characteristics that are significant in the realization of the policy. Secondly, through discourse, it is possible to identify how reality is represented. Therefore, discourse is a moment of a social practice, which is a relatively stabilized form of social activity (Fairclough, 2001).
In this regard, we assume EE to be a social practice composed of different discourses and ideologies. Furthermore, EE is a social practice that is connected to other social practices, such as legislation to generate public policy related to EE and researchers’ work. Thus, discourse as a moment of social practice is in the action, in the representation of action, as well as in the practice of social actors depending on their role inside of social practice (Ventura, 2017). Based on these ideas, we looked for which researcher’s discourses are expressed in the NPEEC.Furthermore, we are interested in understanding how the NPEEC has been building relationships between EE researchers and policymakers.