Starting Points: Questions of Quality in Environmental Education

Abstract

What does good education look like? Despite recent attempts to develop standards for educational subjects and cross-curricular areas such as environmental education, there remains the question about whether rhetoric can influence practice. In this paper we suggest that rather than establish normative criteria, it may be more fruitful to find ways to engage teachers in critical reflection about their own practice and thinking. So, we have constructed a series of questions to create conditions for such reflection. The intent is not to close the reflective process with established criteria but to raise questions as a means of opening the dialogue. Thus engaged, we hope practitioners and theorists can take this dialogue in directions which are meaningful to them. We thus encourage praxis which evolves as the critical thinking about environmental education evolves through discussion and debate. Resume Quelles sont les qualites d’une bonne education? En depit de recentes tentatives d’etablir des normes pour les sujets scolaires et les domaines pluridisciplinaires, tels que l’education relative a l’environnement, la question demeure si la rhetorique peut influencer la pratique. Dans cette communication, plutot que d’etablir des criteres normatifs, nous suggerons qu’il serait peutetre plus fructueux de trouver des facons d’engager les enseignants dans une reflexion critique sur leurs propres pratique et pensee. Par consequent, nous avons prepare une serie de questions pour creer les conditions propices a cette reflexion. L’intention n’est pas de freiner le processus de reflexion avec des criteres etablis, mais de soulever des questions pour amorcer le dialogue. Ainsi, nous esperons que les praticiens et les theoriciens orienteront le dialogue sur des