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.

Our methodology was conducted in three stages. The first stage was to identify the Colombian researchers who had contributed to EE before the policy. To reach our objective, it was necessary to review journals and books (Journals on the Dialnet platform, and books in the Online Public Access Catalog of the University of Valle (Colombia)). Our analysis revealed just 38 documents (2 papers and 36 books) complied with our criteria. We found that only five Colombian researchers were referenced before NPEEC, Augusto Angel Maya, Maritza Torres, Ana Patricia Noguera, Gustavo Wilches Chaux, and Julio Carrizosa. After that, we proceeded to the second stage, that was codification of each of the aforementioned researchers’ discourses. We drew up a category system through deductive and inductive analysis. We used emergent coding schemes to code the selections of authors’ ideological and thinking for broad ideas: (1) ideological words for describing the environment, (2) ideological words for describing EE, (3) arguments used in favour of EE, and (4) their proposal for or contribution to the field of EE. In the third stage, we analysed discursive practices through categories referring to document analysis through a) the frequency of discourses, b) intertextuality, and c) interdiscursivity. a) We ran the entire document through the AdTAT software of the University of Adelaide, which allowed us to identify position and uses of the discourses’ codes, such as, culture, environmental system, environment. b) Intertextuality was identified through references incorporated into a text, either explicitly marked, for example, by quotation marks and reporting clauses, or using the exact words of the researcher. c) Interdiscursivity was interpreted through discourses included in another textual context, for example, ‘the world we want’ written by the social forum. Finally, we focused on identifying key discourses and modes of operation of ideologies to understand the underlying ideologies in discourses of dominance and resistance, pointing out the gaps, fractures, contradictions, and thus, possibilities of social transformation. To identify discourses of dominance, which is connected to the neo-liberal political project of removing obstacles to the new economic order, we looked for terms such as globalization, governance, flexibility, ethics (as the change of behaviour), employability, exclusion, nature (an object or resource) and so forth. To identify discourses of resistance, we considered, for instance, new management discourses that try to create management systems based upon teamwork, relatively non-hierarchical, networked, ways of managing organizations (Fairclough, 2017).

The study permitted an understanding of researcher participation in the NPEEC, as well as, if their voices were used, dissimulated, or deleted. In the case of this research, CDA proved a useful tool for discovering and identifying intertextuality and interdisciplinarity in politics. In addition, this theoretical framework is useful to explore social processes in association with language in use, because this process contributes to understanding relations of domination. Likewise, discourses of rupture could generate spaces of resistance. Therefore, we found that the discourses of the researchers were covered in NPEEC, but the policy gave greater relevance to legislative guidelines and international political discourses, which leads us to reflect on the urgency of a dialogue between Colombian politics, research in local EE and international policies. The result of this study not only presented the state of the research-policy relationship for NPEEC but also showed new forms of relationships between EE researchers and policymakers from a collaborative and participatory approach to research in the formulation and policy development. This study can be a Latin American example of how exploring discourses and their ideologies in the field of EE can problematize what was assumed as natural or beneficial for the community of researchers. Similarly, considering the lack of studies and debates on the way in which research is related to politics in the field of EE, the article shows how CDA, used as a theoretical-methodological tool can contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics and the research-policy interface, as well as the implications and the real nature of these relationships. Accordingly, the analysis of policy through the discourses has the potential to contribute to advancing EE because it allows a critical approach such as, addressing emancipatory and transformative content, recognizing practices of material and symbolic alienation for discussing hegemonic problems.

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