Queer Commitments in Environmental Education: Orientating Around Perceived Barriers

• In Event: Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: Expanding on Queer Research and Practice in Environmental Education

Abstract

I am currently a tenure-track assistant professor in a multidisciplinary, but largely quantitatively-driven “natural science” department. I was hired on the basis of my research interests in child-animal relationships and for my experience and knowledge of environmental education and conservation. I emphasized these interests and embodied a particular kind of expertise during the hiring process and presentations, while strategically backgrounding other interests. Now, I primarily teach courses and conduct research within this particular framework such as Conservation Psychology, Conservation Education, and Child-Animal Studies. Yet, I have a “secondary” interest—both personally and professionally—in queer (eco)pedagogy (Russell, 2013). While I have not been told that my work in this area is off limits nor should be set aside, I face three particular roadblocks to pursuing this “secondary,” queer research agenda: 1) I am at a Jesuit, Catholic institution; 2) I am striving to achieve tenure in a department that mainly focuses on non-human animal behavior and conservation; and 3) I have limited time and resources to pursue a secondary research agenda at this time. These three areas of concern serve as the background for this paper, which furthers theoretical discussions of the “margins” of environmental education research (Russell, Fawcett, & Oakley, 2013), notably various structural and ideological barriers and current neoliberal trends in post-secondary education and research practices.
Further, this paper responds to the explicit call for further development of sustained research agendas around LGBTQ issues in education that was part of the recent AERA Capitol Hill briefing (Levine, 2015) by considering how environmental education researchers and practitioners might cultivate and support growth in this area at a critical time. I also address the way in which taking on such research—whether as a primary or secondary area of focus—might be seen or experienced as a political maneuver within particular institutions, with potential personal and professional consequences. Finally, I suggest that queer ecopedagogical work should engage with diverse publics beyond the academy, in order to establish a wider sense of inclusion around sustainability and other utopian, ecopedagogical orientations (Kahn, 2011). This last point in particular aligns with the 2016 AERA theme, calling for "public understanding, political debate, and professional practice in increasingly diverse democracies in the US and around the globe" (Oakes, Welner & Renee, 2015).
Methodologically, this paper begins with an auto-ethnographic account (Quicke, 2010) of working through various perceived roadblocks to establishing a queer research agenda as discussed above. Using my own experience as a foundation, my analysis then moves into a larger, queer phenomenological analysis (Ahmed, 2006) of how neoliberalism works in institutions of higher education to “orient” researchers—particularly through the elusive tenure and promotion process—into various trajectories and approved agendas. I conclude with further research that is needed, and invite other “queer” EE researchers to ponder various possibilities for collaborative research, including participating in the next phase of data collection and analysis.

Author

• Joshua James Russell, Canisius College