2014 represents the 30th year of the Australian Journal of Environmental Education (AJEE), making it one of the oldest academic journals in environmental education still in publication. The oldest is The Journal of Environmental Education, founded in 1969. Another journal, The International Journal of Environmental Education and Information, was founded in 1981 but is no longer in publication, and the Southern African Journal of Environmental Education, also founded in 1984, has not had any issues since 2011.

The relationship between outdoor education and environmental education in Aotearoa New Zealand has undergone many changes since formal education began in early colonial times. Discussion draws from qualitative doctoral research undertaken by the authors that investigated education for sustainability in outdoor education and how meaning is ascribed to outdoor experiences. The article describes how environmental education and outdoor education had common historical roots in nature studies that eventually were teased apart by the development of separate agendas for learning and assessment, coupled with the political context of the 1970s and 1980s. The article finds that contemporary forces relating to the economy, society and the environment are now driving a re-engagement of the two discourses in Aotearoa New Zealand at a variety of levels, from schools to national bodies, and that this re-engagement signals a positive outcome for addressing key environmental issues and engaging students in the outdoors.

The Australian Journal of Environmental Education (AJEE), first published in 1984, is a rich source for investigating the history of environmental education in Australia, as it has sampled research and writings in the field since the Australian Association for Environmental Education (AAEE) was established in 1980.

Modern zoos utilise a variety of education tools for communicating with visitors. Previous research has discussed the benefits of providing multiple education communications, yet little research provides an indication of what communications are being employed within zoos today. This research is a two-phased, mixed-methods investigation into the communication between zoos and their general visitors. Phase 1 involved an online questionnaire to which 176 zoos from 50 countries reported on the types of education communications they typically use for their general visitors. The second phase comprised nine zoo case studies, enabling direct observation and face-to-face interviews on site with zoo staff and zoo visitors. The findings of this research provide a snapshot of education communications offered to zoo visitors, and indicate that zoo exhibit signage remains the most prevalent medium. The findings further indicate that 95% of visitors read at least some exhibit signs and that more than 70% of participating zoos utilise person-to-person education. The implications of these findings for improving zoos’ educational communication are discussed.

Australia regularly suffers floods, droughts, bushfires and cyclones, which are predicted to increase and/or intensify in the future due to climate change. While school-aged children are among the most vulnerable to natural disasters, they can be empowered through education to prepare for and respond to disasters. School disaster education is essential to raise awareness among students and their communities and to encourage preparedness action. However, evaluation of Australian school-based disaster education programs has been limited. This article presents the results of a critical literature review of peer-reviewed publications on disaster education programs in Australian schools conducted through Scopus, A Plus, PsycINFO and the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) databases. Results highlight a significant dearth of studies examining disaster education programs in Australian schools. Recommendations for future research are proposed to bridge knowledge gaps and establish disaster preparedness resources that support children's knowledge and preparedness for disasters.

This article was written very early in my career. I was part way through my doctoral degree study on environmental education (EE) theory and practice, and had just completed an evaluation of a national EE curriculum development project. In both of these projects, I found that despite the presence of an emerging discourse about what a distinctive EE is or ought to be, classroom practice represented as EE was essentially either informational or nature study in character — somewhat different from the ‘education for the environment’ being advanced by researchers and curriculum developers internationally at the time. It seemed to me that this situation was less one of teachers’ failure to implement government policy than one of EE curriculum developers failing to recognise teachers’ existing, robust personal constructions of EE (of the environment, education, teaching and learning . . .). An entailment of this position is that EE research has the opportunity and responsibility of exploring the relationship of teachers’ theories and practices and the professional contexts within which these are intelligible. Consequently, a new wave emerged of participatory research involving teachers-as-researchers directly investigating the meaning and significance of their professional work. Some of this work is represented in the following publications.

Despite the ever-growing body of knowledge about human impact on the environment and the need to work towards a sustainable future, participation in environmental action initiatives among the general population remains low. There is an increasingly urgent need to develop a culture of participation among young people who in turn may become future leaders. This article describes a study that was undertaken to investigate pre-service teachers’ environmental knowledge, their willingness to participate in environmental initiatives, and their perceptions about environmental education in schools. The study participants were pre-service teachers between the ages of 19 and 22. Data were collected through online surveys, followed by focus group interviews where pre-service teachers were given the opportunity to expand and comment on the survey responses. Findings from this study are consistent with previous research on pre-service teacher literacy, attitudes, perceptions and participation. However, the pre-service teachers’ perceptions about the role of schools and adults in nurturing environmental awareness and active participation among youth provides educators with new insights for the development of a more comprehensive environmental education curriculum that focuses on integration of theory and action.

This article explores conceptualisations of sustainability and perceptions of its importance in curriculum held by business subject and program leaders. Results are reported from an empirical study of the first-year Bachelor of Business program at an Australian university. Research data was collected in 16 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with subject and program leaders over two teaching periods in 2011. Interview transcripts were analysed through the identification of key themes. The results reveal that teaching academics believe sustainability is something more dynamic and complex than they are able to feature in their subjects, reflecting the difficulty in appropriately conceptualising sustainability, as well as differences between the academics’ beliefs, intentions and actions. Few studies explore the conceptualisations of sustainability held by subject and program leaders. If business schools are to produce sustainability-savvy graduates, the teaching academics need to have a clear and, ideally, shared view of sustainability.

At the turn of the 21st century, an historical moment of rapid earth system change and environmental crisis in an era labelled by some scholars as the Anthropocene (the age of humans), the need for environmental education is perhaps greater than ever; but, as I argued 27 years ago, not just any environmental education will do. As the world confronts increasingly complex issues of rising poverty, escalating conflict, and ecological degradation, it matters what we mean by ‘the environment’, and it matters what educational practices we engage. Too often, environmental education has adopted the persistent and problematic ‘human versus nature’ binary in Western thinking, a conceptual legacy that leads to false dichotomies separating problems considered more ‘social’ from those classified as more ‘environmental’. Over the past 3 decades, the field of environmental education has expanded globally, benefitting from the path-breaking analyses of environmental justice studies, feminist political ecology, and the environmental humanities, all transdisciplinary fields that offer environmental education a critical frame for understanding the dynamic ‘social nature’ of human and environment connections and interdependencies. Yet, the current discourse of the Anthropocene reengages these oppressive dichotomies. To rethink and transform this re-splitting trend, I envision the flourishing of a robust, socially critical environmental education grounded in feminist analyses, environmental justice and decolonial theories, and engaged in embodied, lively action research collaborations supporting more sustainable and resilient communities.

This study sought to distil recommendations and curriculum design principles that could underpin the re-imagination of the RMIT University coursework Masters of Sustainable Practice (MSP). The aim of the study was to redesign the program to better meet the expectations of contemporary working professionals. Four data sources were used to develop 12 program recommendations: postgraduate sustainability education literature, postgraduate coursework literature, publicly available information for contemporary coursework Masters sustainability programs both in Australia and overseas, and interview data from current and graduate students from the RMIT University Masters of Sustainable Practice. The study proposes a novel curriculum (re)design model comprised of six curriculum design principles that the authors argue are essential for the development of curricula for contemporary working professionals. Sustainable practice coursework Masters programs need to: offer choice, flexibility and authentic work-based assessment opportunities; provide significant guidance to achieve individual aspirations and to customise the program for each student; recognise learning through current workplace roles and through continuing professional development opportunities; use integrative assessments to achieve the Australian Qualification Framework knowledge and skills application requirements; incorporate short credit-bearing courses, in particular for the development of employability skills; and support students to transition to professional practice.

The importance of the environment is something of a cracked record to many small business owners, as historically any calls to business to change or improve their practices or behaviours were from the ‘environmental’ or ‘green’ perspective, rather than from a business perspective. As a consequence, many small businesses have simply tuned out. This research sought to identify the impact of an education intervention program that encouraged better environmental management practices and provided practical assistance to the businesses. The research was designed to test the effectiveness of the program and record any changes that occurred in the businesses over the duration of the project. To measure changes, it included a pre- and post-intervention survey. Overall, there was an increased awareness in most of the businesses in regard to environmental issues. Participants from many of the businesses also expressed positive changes to both behaviours and attitudes to environmental issues. This demonstrated the value of the program, and also highlighted the challenge to engage small business, even when a business case is apparent, given the cost of implementing this type of intensive and personalised assistance.

I wrote ‘Narrative and Nature: Unsustainable Fictions in Environmental Education’ in 1991 as a revised version of a paper subtitled ‘Poststructural Inquiries in Environmental Education’ that I presented at the Sixth National Conference of the Australian Association for Environmental Education in September 1990. To the best of my knowledge, these papers were the first instances of advocacy for poststructuralist analyses of dicourses/practices in the Anglophone literature of environmental education. The key influences on my thinking at this time were US and Canadian ‘reconceptualist’ curriculum scholars, including Cleo Cherryholmes, Jacques Daignault, William Doll, Clermont Gauthier, Rebecca Martusewicz, William Pinar and William Reynolds. The significance and impact of my poststructuralist inquiries in environmental education were recognised by the award of the inaugural Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Environmental Education Research in 1997. Since then, my ‘post’ scholarship has expanded to include postcolonialism and posthumanism. Narrative continues to be an important theme in my work, especially through my development of an approach to narrative experimentation that I call ‘rhizosemiotic play’.

There has been very limited progress along the pathways to sustainability sketched in my 1991 article. Some would argue we have taken several steps backwards. Environmental education is now more prepared to acknowledge the role of neoliberal global capitalism in promoting unsustainable development, and to associate sustainability with social movements and parties of the green left who urge new forms of economy and global democracy. Corporations and governments have been successful in linking education for sustainable development to ecological modernisation or light green versions of the status-quo, but in England, even the limited advance of a policy on sustainable schools under New Labour has been swept away by the present coalition government.