What's in a Name? The Signifiers and Empty Signifiers of Environmental Sustainability Education: Implications for Teacher Education

• In Event: Consequential Teacher Environmental and Sustainability Education Research: From the Margins to Mainstream "Truth"

Abstract

Appealing to the call by international TESE researchers (Evan’s et al., 2017) and the “necessity for academics working at program and course levels to make TESE more comprehensive and integrated,” and the AERA 2023 call theme for presenters to consider the essential sites of TESE research and how they might engage dialogically with communities throughout research, this article questions how ESE’s signifiers and empty signifiers may contribute to its mainstreaming in teacher education. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to examine why environmental and sustainability education (ESE) employs a diversity of names (signifiers) when referring to itself (e.g., environmental education, education for sustainable development, education for sustainability, etc.), in contrast to other fields of study such as science education that employs a singular name to describe its field (i.e., science education). Whereas singular names remain relatively stable over time, the names for ESE change and diversify with time, reflecting current worldviews as orientations toward nature, political ideology, ethics, and aims of education. The argument we develop is that the moniker of ESE is an empty signifier in that it fails to convey meaning about what it signifies. Tracing the history of the pre-sustainability, sustainability, and post-sustainability field signifiers, and their respective sub-field signifiers (e.g., environmental education and education for sustainable development), we conduct a philosophical inquiry, augmented by a modified form of semiotic analysis, to expose the degree to which these signifiers are empty. The limitations and benefits of empty signification are explored through philosophical interpretation. Implications of empty signifier limitations are considered in teacher education and the manner in which they may contribute to the unsuccessful mainstreaming of TESE. Specifically, because of the signifier problem, ESE struggles to get consistent traction within teacher education. And, rather than enjoying the same subject status as science education, for instance, its precarious status is left to dedicated ESE teacher education scholars to resuscitate (Evans et al., 2017; Ferreira et al., 2009; Gough, 2016; Inwood & Jagger, 2014; Steele, 2010). The answer to the question “What’s In a Name?” with regard to ESE in teacher education and its mainstreaming in faculties of education is complicated. This situation, we argue, is compounded due to the outstanding issue of ESE’s empty signification. In our experience, this is an additional and significant challenge facing the mainstreaming of ESE in teacher education. We anticipate three options for TESE to move forward:

1. Conservative option: maintain status quo.
2. Moderate option(s): degrees of programmatic or curricular tinkering around the edges in teacher education, which include:
(a) Idealist: continue to promote this stance by restructuring and remodeling teacher education so that it is consistent with ESE philosophy;
(b) Realist: adapt ESE philosophy to the operational realities of teacher education (e.g., dedicated core/compulsory ESE course).
3. Radical option: revise the aim of teacher education.

We conclude that a core or compulsory TESE course should be mandated to ensure that all teacher candidates receive the education they require to educate future generations of children to live well on Earth.

Authors

• Douglas David Karrow, Brock University
  Presenting Author

• Xavier Eric Fazio, Brock University
  Presenting Author

• David B. Zandvliet, Simon Fraser University
  Presenting Author