Volume 39 – Issue 2

In this issue, AJEE brings you a collection of manuscripts that showcase research with innovative knowledge and practice that progresses ideas and possibilities in our field. Topics include: ‘cripping’ environmental education to move beyond ableism; politics and practice in the School Strike 4 Climate; botany as a focus for learning about place and Indigenous knowledges; nature immersions contributing to learning to teach reading; developing environmental education programmes; and green consumerism regarding sustainable palm oil. Methodological explorations include: assemblage drawings used in discussion about climate activism in schools; immanent praxiography; and agential realism. Manuscripts represent research from New Zealand, the Philippines, Western Australia, and the eastern states of Australia including a focus on both large eastern reefs – the southern and the great barrier. A communication article encourages us to consider the importance of children’s literature in intergenerational learning and heralds the expansion of AJEE reviews to include children’s literature, film, music, etc. Following are some short descriptions introducing each manuscript and the list of reviews.

Article 1: Cripping Environmental Education: Rethinking disability, nature, and interdependent futures by Jenne Schmidt. Exposing the unintentional focus on ableism in the field of environmental education, Schmidt suggests ‘cripping’ the field to reveal the underlying assumptions to establish new ways of practising. This manuscript describes how crip theory (from critical disability studies) enables the consideration of ableism in education with a focus on best practice in environmental education.

Article 2: School Strike 4 Climate in Aotearoa-New Zealand: Youth, relationships, and climate justice by Sally Birdsall. This reflective essay follows the disbanding of the Auckland Chapter of the School Strike 4 Climate New Zealand. Birdsall interprets the disbanding as an enabling strategy to encourage the rebuilding of robust and reciprocal relationships between humans and more-than-humans and highlighting the racism, colonialism, and climate justice challenges.

Article 3: Assemblage Drawings as Talking Points: Deleuze, posthumans, and climate-activist teachers by Thomas Everth, Laura Gurney, and Chris Eames. Employing Deleuzian philosophy to explore climate impacts on secondary teachers and the New Zealand education system, this manuscript provides insights from post-human perspectives. Through two detailed cases studies (with additional participant insights), teacher practices are examined for ways to proceed in these precarious times.

Article 4: Reviving Botany in the Curriculum: The botanical journey of two Western Australian early childhood teachers by Kimberley Beasley, Sandra Hesterman, and Libby Lee-Hammond. Exploring the Early Years Learning Framework that promotes connection to nature for young children, this manuscript researches the impacts of actively increasing the botanical literacies of two teachers. The findings describe the application of inquiry-based and place-based methods including First Nations Peoples’ perspectives.

Article 5: Nature Immersions: Teaching reading through a real-world curriculum by Katherine Bates. Positioned beyond the reading wars around phonics in Australia, this manuscript presents an eco-conceptual framework devised from a participatory action learning research project with pre-service teachers. The implementation of immersive activities promoting transdisciplinary connection to nature by pre-service teachers increased self-efficacy about teaching reading.

Article 6: Manifestations of Environmental Principles in Bridging Scientific Context, Reasoning, and Behaviour: Framework in the development of environmental education programmes in the Philippines by Lorie E. Malaluan, Allen A. Espinosa, and Virgil D. Duad. The findings from this study will serve as baseline data for the environmental education programmes through the K-12 Science curriculum in the Philippines, where connecting student learning to the real world positively impacts environmental action.

Article 7: Purchasing Products with Sustainable Palm Oil: Designing and evaluating an online intervention for Australian consumers by Cassandra Shruti Sundaraja, Donald W. Hine, Einar B. Thorsteinsson, and Amy D. Lykins. An Australian quantitative study of data from an online survey (n = 628) in which participants considered three different prompts. The purpose was to assess barriers to education, motivation, and product availability through an interactive website intervention anticipating increases in the purchasing of sustainable palm oil and green consumerism.

Thesis Synopsis: Enacting More-than-human Pedagogies in Response to Ecological Precarity: An immanent praxiography by Scott Jukes. Post-humanist and new materialist ideas engage to inform pedagogies for outdoor and environmental education using the emergent methodological idea of immanent praxiography. A link to the full thesis is provided.

The communication article and the two reviews that follow introduce a new strategy that AJEE is employing – we engage in considerations (reviews) about all forms of resources and perform reviews on children’s literature, music, film, etc., as well as non-fiction environmental education references.

Communication: Urgency Through Education: Futures learning through children’s literature by Glenn Auld, Peta J. White, and Joanne O’Mara. The article considers the importance of children’s literature in intergenerational learning by considering one example of a book and a framework from a previous AJEE publication to conduct an analysis exploring the socio-ecological integrity of the messaging.

Review: Keepers of the Reef by Sharon Wismer - Reviewed by Prue Francis.

Review: The Great Southern Reef by Paul Venzo and Prue Fraqncis - Reviewed by Sharon Wismer.

Review: Education for Sustainable Development in the Caribbean. Pedagogy, processes, and practices by Karin Murris - Reviewed by Denise Minott.

Review: Karen Barad as Educator: Agential realism and education by Lorna Down and Therese Ferguson - Reviewed by Shae Brown.

AJEE acknowledges the efforts of our authors in the preparation and development of these manuscripts. We also acknowledge the voluntary efforts of our reviewers as they provide high-quality feedback in short timelines to enable our field to grow and develop through careful support of each manuscript. Finally, AJEE acknowledges the voluntary efforts of our Editorial Executive: nine colleagues proud to enable the production and development of AJEE, a high-quality journal that encourages and supports our environmental education research community.

AJEE community updates

AJEE produces four issues per volume (year) publishing a range of manuscripts as well as several special issues (and is soon to increase to five issues per volume). AJEE has an ongoing and open call for special issue proposals. We are looking for innovative or contemporary ideas that stretch and consolidate our field as one of importance in these challenging times. A successful proposal will provide an invitation that many colleagues can take up to showcase their research and its application in environmental education. Please forward your ideas or proposal to the Editor-In-Chief (peta.white@deakin.edu.au).

Currently AJEE is inviting proposals for two special issues.

Relational Ontologies and Multispecies Worlds: Transdisciplinary Possibilities for Environmental Education with Guest Editors: Kathryn Riley, Scott Jukes, and Pauliina Rautio. Please see the AJEE website for more details (https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-file-manager/file/63dbc982469bea0d0d74d586/Relational-Ontologies-Special-Issue.pdf) and send your proposals to Dr Kathryn Riley (kathryn.riley@umanitoba.ca). This call closes in July 2023 with selected manuscripts due December 2023.

Power and Politics: Re-engaging Environmental Education Research Within Critical Environmental Politics Guest Editors: Paul Hart (University of Regina) and Peta J. White (Deakin University) Please see the AJEE website for more details (https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-file-manager/file/64537536ac56ca6353a05d29/AJEE-SI-Politics-and-Power.pdf) and send your proposals to Peta White (peta.white@deakin.edu.au). This call closes in September 2023 with selected manuscripts due March 2024.

Volume 39, Issue 3 (AJEE’s next issue this year) will showcase our most recent special issue: Indigenous Philosophy in Environmental Education: Relearning How to Love, Feel, Hear, and Live with Place with Guest Editors: Anne Poelina, Yin Paradies, Sandra Wooltorton, Mindy Blaise, Libby Jackson-Barratt, and Laurie Guimond.

AJEE is pleased to announce the launch event for the above special issues will be held in person and online at the Australian Association for Environmental Education (AAEE) national biennial conference – Research Symposium on Wednesday the 27^th of September 2023. The launch event will include a keynote panel presentation from the Guest Editors and some Authors of the special issue as well as a morning tea celebration.

AJEE Editorial Executive members will be present at the conference and research symposium. Conference and Research Symposium presenters are encouraged to consider developing presentations into publications for AJEE. AAEE Conference – ‘Listening to Country, learning together, transforming the future’ (https://aaeeconference.org.au/).

AAEE Research Symposium – ‘Researching in Dialogue – Country, Relationalities and Otherness’. The call for Expressions of Interest is now open and closes 16th June (https://aaeeconference.org.au/call-for-eois/).

AJEE is now publishing Gold Open Access which means that all manuscripts published in AJEE can be viewed and downloaded on-demand and without cost to the reader. Finally, our research is accessible for all with internet access. We anticipate this will increase the citation rates and result in AJEE being a highly effective place to publish research.

All Authors are met with an article processing charge (APC) for their manuscripts, although if they are not employed by a university that has an agreement with our publishers (Cambridge University Press – CUP) or if authors do not have funds (grants) to pay the APC, they can apply for a waiver. CUP has guaranteed that all manuscripts will be published, and the APC should not be a reason to not proceed with publishing in AJEE. Please contact the Editor-In-Chief (peta.white@deakin.edu.au) if you have questions.

We invite you to consider publishing your research in AJEE and please share this invitation with your colleagues and graduate students. The Editorial Executive is working on quick returns for all manuscript reviews while also providing high-quality feedback. We enact our Diversity, Inclusivity, and Equity policy (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/australian-journal-of-environmental-education/diversity-equity-and-inclusion-policy) and can offer proofreading support to non-English speaking colleagues writing for our journal. You might also enjoy reviewing for AJEE.