En-Gendering the Material in Environmental Education Research: Reassembling Otherwise

• In Event: 52.065 - Moving Gender From Margin to Center in Environmental Education Research

Abstract

There is a long history of gendered research in environmental education and in the broader field of educational research. In some cases, the concept of gender is used unproblematically as a binary and as one variable among several when considering environmental attitudes or values. Such approaches suggest that there have been conceptual limitations in the ways qualitative research is framed and grounded (Haywood, 2008). There has been an evolution to the use of increasingly complex and nuanced concepts to explore issues of gender more broadly in educational research (Childers, 2013; Gough, 2013). It seems to be important to consider how, in gendered environmental education research, we can problematize methodological simplicity and avoid the normative approaches that can "produce knowledge devoid of critical reflection and contextual consideration” (Koro-Ljungberg & Mazzei, 2012, p. 728). The concept of subjectivity, as framed by many poststructural theorists, provides opportunities to describe more contingent and continuous processes of being and becoming in relation to gender and environment (Davies, 2013). Approaches considering multiple subjectivities and diffractive analyses consider intersectionality and problematize more simplistic notions of individual positionings as well as exposing binary categorizations—because it is just not that simple anymore (Hart & Hart, 2014). Examples of explorations of subjectivity and subjectification processes are emerging where there are considerations of intersectionality when describing environmental subjectivities and the discourses that contribute to the ways in which they come to be. I propose, as my part of this symposium, to use two examples of the ways in which the application of concepts that, framed theoretically and methodologically, are useful in taking up questions of gender. The examples demonstrate parallels in onto-epistemic considerations, theoretical framings, and concepts that could be applied by those interested in exploring, in more complex ways, issues of gender in environmental education research.

Author

• Catherine Hart, University of Regina