Families, Homes and Environmental Education

Abstract

Abstract The findings from a study of how Green families construct and practise versions of an environmental ethic and ecopolitic in the home are suggestive of how environmental education in schools might be revised. In this study, the green home proved to be a very different form of environmental education and practice of sustainability. Children's environmental learning was closely associated with their doing of practical things in the home in relation to the everyday environmental problematic. But this embodied, situated and practical doing as learning hinged upon their parents' environmental commitments and the family's functioning as they were respectively “structured”—materially, symbolically, geographically and historically by the social relations and conditions of the home, availability of resources, school and community networks, and prevailing cultural climate. Hence, this study of household ecologies, or postmodern oikos , provides evidence and insights for the further development of environmental education curricula and pedagogical strategies, understandings of a range of factors influencing learners' environmental engagement and action and, consequently, ecologically focussed research endeavours.