NW 30: From the Margins to the Mainstream (or) when every education becomes an environmental education

Network
Network 30: Environmental and Sustainability Education Research

Title
From the Margins to the Mainstream (or) when every education becomes an environmental education

Abstract
What happens to the identity of a field when the topics it explores become relevant to all fields? How does our research respond to and feel the effects of the movement of our work from the margins to the mainstream?  Linking to this year’s theme of looking forward, we encourage you to consider your research in light of how its methods and findings traverse the boundaries and borders of the field, linking to and emerging in other areas of research and topics of study.

The Call
The recent review of abstracts carried out by EERA has shown a rapid and intense rise in the prevalence of issues relevant to Network 30: Environmental and Sustainability Education Research. This is testament to the effectiveness of EERA’s networks to provide a gathering place for people, and its impact on growing and developing a field within a network. For 30 years or so before this, collaborating and sharing ideas between people who were working on questions relevant to ESE was very challenging, and piecemeal, relying on individual researchers and institutions to make and maintain connections. But besides the impact of the formation of the network on the rise in interest we have seen, it is also evident that the issues of environmental and sustainability education are coming up in conversations in many other networks during ECER, due to various circumstances, including the increased impact of nature and climate crises alongside the subsequent rise in policy and curriculum renewals connected to this. This is therefore an opportunity to consider our identity, how we move forward and the diverse disciplinary and professional references that arise here. What is the role for a network and indeed a field at a time where the substantive focus of the field moves from the margins to the mainstream (and back?)?

Linking to this year’s theme of looking forward, we encourage you to consider your research in light of how its methods and findings traverse the boundaries and borders of the field, linking to and emerging in other areas of research and topics of study.

• What does it mean to address, question and explore the environmental from both within and beyond the boundaries of our field?
• How can we maintain our identity and curate the knowledge from many years of work in this space, whilst also achieving the goal of every education being an environmental education? Is this even a desirable goal?
• Can we work with the notions of porous boundaries and boundary objects to help us to maintain a field, but also open boundaries?
• How does mainstreaming contribute to reproduce and transform unsustainable imaginaries, structures and practices, including global injustice?
• What political, ethical and existential considerations are called for?
• What do philosophies of relationality offer in helping us to understand these questions?
• What new ways of researching and understanding are needed to help us to navigate these shifts?
• What kinds of knowledge production are appropriate to face with societal challenges?
• We encourage you to look beyond the bounderies of our network and to link up with members from other networks to explore these questions, and to think about other formats for submissions like workshops and lightning talks to help to achieve this.

Contact Person(s)
Elsa Lee