This paper reviews Australian Government actions related to environmental education, particularly in the past decade, and examines the actions forthcoming from two national action plans (Environment Australia, 2000 and DEWHA, 2009), the implementation strategy for the Decade of ESD (DEWHA, 2006) and developments related to the Australian Curriculum. This analysis is inspired by the Australian-ness of the metaphor of the curriculum as a jigsaw puzzle suggested by Robottom (1987), the seemingly constant battle for survival in the formal curriculum that environmental education has faced since the 1970s (Fensham, 1990; Gough, 1997), and the ongoing tensions between science education and environmental education in Australia's formal school curriculum.

In this article, I draw on interviews with graduates from an Outdoor and Environmental Education course to explore the ways in which their environmental ethics changed since leaving university. I do this in relation to the graduates' personal and professional experiences, particularly in the context of teaching Outdoor Education and Physical Education in secondary schools. By offering two alternative readings of graduates' experiences, this research contributes to existing education literature about the ‘wash-out effect’ of teacher education courses once beginning teachers become immersed in schools. In the first reading I find evidence of regulatory and normalising strategies of society and school communities and a ‘plateauing’ of graduates' engagement with environmental practices. In a second reading, framed by Foucault's theory of power and ethics, I discern acts of ‘tactical’ resistance. This reading foregrounds strategies graduates use to negotiate the constraining spaces of schools.

This paper addresses the question of how Australian environmental education (EE) research was conceptualised and contextualised in the decade of the 1990s. Sixty seven articles published by Australian authors in this journal from 1990–2000 were analysed to examine the conceptualisation of this research using an inductive emergent categorisation approach and a five frames model (Reid, in press) of key arguments and debates in the field. Contextualisation was explored in relation to specialist areas, scale and environmental dimensions of focus. A search for a coherent and distinct meaning of of this research was explored by making comparisons with international environmental education research during a similar time period that was the subject of two reviews. These analyses revealed that Australian environmental education research can be characterised as questioning and challenging prevailing (at the time) environmental education orthodoxies by critiquing and theorising the conceptual and curriculum framing of environmental education, most commonly from a socially critical and global perspective. Specialist areas and educational sectors that received little attention are also discussed.

A national curriculum is presently being developed in Australia with implementation due during 2014. Associated standards for the accreditation of teachers and for teacher education providers have been prepared with the standards describing skills and attributes that teachers are expected to attain. The developing Australian Curriculum, along with the teacher accreditation and initial teacher education program standards, claim to support guiding statements that describe aspirations for all young Australians. Those guiding statements acknowledge that ‘sustainability’ is an essential element of education for young people in Australia. However ‘sustainability’ is unconvincingly represented in the curriculum and is not visible in the standards. This could potentially result in its omission from teacher education and qualification at all levels. A similar situation already exists in New South Wales (NSW). This article illustrates the positioning of five freshly graduated primary teachers within the context of their five NSW schools and from this distils implications for teaching ‘sustainability’ within the developing national proposals.

Many environmental educators were motivated to enter the feld by a concern for the loss of places to which they felt a strong sense of attachment and belonging. This raises the question of whether a sense of place, or attachment to the Australian biophysical or cultural landscape, has shaped Australian environmental education research. An analysis was conducted of articles by Australian authors published in the AJEE in the period from 1990–2000, a time that preceded the (re)emergence of attention to place-based education in academic circles. Only four of 67 articles addressed the author's or other Australian's sense of place. Several explanations for this fnding are examined, drawing on some of the environmental psychology literature on place identity as well as the notion that sense of place involves multiple interrelated personal, cultural and professional identities. Finally, an argument is made as to why place attachments are important to environmental education research.

This study investigated student views on the relationship between their environmental attitudes and behaviours and their thoughts about barriers and motivators to environmentally responsible behaviours. The environmental attitudes and behaviours of students participating in a classroom-based environmental education program were measured using two Likert scales that had been tested for internal consistency and validity using the Rasch polytomous measurement model. Focus groups were held for students to comment on the results from the two questionnaires and provide suggestions with regards to the barriers and motivators influencing their behaviour. The findings of the study support previous research about the relationship between attitude and behaviour and the students' comments on the results provided insight that has not been widely reported elsewhere. Conclusions were drawn regarding the most significant barriers to specific environmental behaviours for high school students and how environmental education programs could be designed and delivered more effectively in secondary schools with the aim of engendering environmentally responsible behaviours in students.

Domestic and international tourists have major impacts on Aotearoa/New Zealand, both positive and negative. In 2010, tourism was the biggest export earner and continues to grow. Environmental consequences of tourism are also growing. Ways of addressing the environmental impacts caused by a mobile society continue to be debated from a variety of practical and theoretical positions. Place-based approaches are a logical discussion focus in addressing these types of social and environmental problems but may be associated with environmental myopia. Tourism, mobility and the principles of environmental education programs such as Leave No Trace are all contested topics within the place-based discourse. This article discusses these tensions and proposes an expansion of place-based and cosmopolitan approaches, with the Leave No Trace Aotearoa/New Zealand campaign presented as an example. The article concludes with possible implications of a more bifocal approach for environmental educators.

Australia is an old continent with an immensely long history of human settlement. The argument made in this paper is that Australia is, and has always been, a natureculture. Just as English was introduced as the dominant language of education with European colonisation, so arrived an ontological premise that linguistically divides a categorised nature from culture and human from “the” environment. Drawing on published work from the Australian tropics, this paper employs a socionature approach to make a philosophical argument for a more nuanced understanding of language, the cultural interface and contemporary moves towards interculture in Australian environmental education practice.

Environmental education is seen as a key driver of small business environmental management, yet little is known about the activities small business owner-managers are undertaking to reduce their environmental impact or in what areas they may need education. Therefore, research that can identify environmental management activities being undertaken in small businesses may provide potential targets for education. As intention to behave in a particular way is often predicated on some sort of planning, extending the research questions to ascertain if planning is occurring and its impact on environmental behaviour in small businesses is also seen as critical. The results revealed that, overall, the level of environmental activity in small business was low and that less than a quarter had an environmental plan. In addition, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and purchasing green energy are not areas of engagement for most small businesses and are recommended as potential targets for education.

The speckled warbler and other woodland birds of south-eastern Australia have declined dramatically since European settlement; many species are at risk of becoming locally and/or nationally extinct. Coincidently, Australian environmental education research of the last decade has largely been silent on the development of pedagogy that refects the natural history of this continent (Stewart, 2006). The current circumstances that face the speckled warbler, I argue, is emblematic of both the state of woodland birds of south-eastern Australia, and the condition of natural history pedagogy within Australian environmental education research. In this paper I employ Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) philosophy “becoming-animal” to explore ways that the life and circumstances of the speckled warbler might inform natural history focused Australian environmental education research. The epistemology and ontology of becoming-speckled warbler offers a basis to reconsider and strengthen links between Australian natural history pedagogy and notions of sustainability.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, recognised as a seminal German polymath, developed a unique approach for investigating nature, termed “delicate empiricism”. Goethe's approach uses empathy, imagination and intuition to promote a participatory engagement with the world. It goes beyond the dualistic-rationalism that defines “conventional” ecological research and can lead to novel insights. “Delicate empiricism” was applied in an ecologically-degraded agricultural landscape in the Brigalow Belt, Queensland, Australia, and its potential for increasing landscape understanding and providing a basis for land-use design was assessed. It was found that Goethe's approach led to holistic, qualitative landscape awareness, not ordinarily accessible via “conventional science”. Application of “delicate empiricism” also gave rise to a land-use design that refected the Australian-ness of the Brigalow Belt landscape, particularly the potential for recovery of native biodiversity values through retention of regrowth vegetation. Overall, the study suggested that there is merit in educating Australian ecologists about “delicate empiricism” to encourage more creative and sensitive landscape management, that is in sync with the environment.

The current “Australian-ness” of outdoor environmental education is an evolving “set” of socio-cultural constructions. These constructions can be interpreted within the circumstances of an empirical study of tertiary study abroad students' participation in an undergraduate semester long unit “Experiencing the Australian Landscape” (EAL) as an ambivalent mixture of belonging and beach, or solidity and fuidity. This ambivalence imparts various meanings within and about the Australian context of beach as a “place”. The study is based on an interpretive mixed method ethnographic and phenomenological small-scale case study. It fnds that the beach experience is infuenced by various social discourses, such as neocolonialism, individualism and mobility. Participants experienced the beach in a fuid sense of non-belonging, despite the EAL intention of fostering a place-responsive pedagogy. In order to understand their experience and its alleged link to an enhanced environmental awareness, an embodied dialectic descriptive interpretation of place experience is suggested.

What experiences have infuenced Chinese educators' environmental consciousness and their involvement in environmental education work? Using the autobiographical inquiry approach the author explored this question with fourteen master environmental educators from various regions of China and examined in depth their signifcant life experiences (SLE). Participants described several paths to become involved in environmental education work. Multiple factors impacted their environmental consciousness. Out of ten main categories of SLE three themes emerged: serendipity, , and a strong sense of responsibility toward the environment and toward environmental education work. This study illuminates the Chinese-ness of environmental education from the angle of life experiences and reflections of environmental educators in mainland China, which also has relevance to and implications for the wider international environmental education community.

What is distinctive or indistinctive about environmental education in schools and other formal education settings in India? In essence, what is the ness of environmental education in the Indian education system? Our responses to these important questions form the focus of this paper, shedding light on the historical, present and future directions (or ness) of environmental education in India. In effect, we attempt to capture the ness of environmental education by considering practice, policy and research developments throughout the various contemporary and traditional environmental education movements. In so doing, we identify a theory-practice gap and a dire lack of research as some of the pertinent issues facing environmental education in India. In conclusion we discuss possible future directions that environmental education might take in addressing these issues.