Participation and learning: Developing perspectives on education and the environment, health and sustainability

Abstract

Participation and Learning emerged out of a loose set of interests and events that have brought the collection's contributors together at a series of formal conferences and informal workshops since 2003 as the Research in Participatory Education Network (RIPEN). RIPEN's work proceeds from the view that current discourses on participatory approaches to education have become increasingly diverse and contested in both theoretical and practical terms, as assumptions and activities have been analysed and tested in general education as well as in the contributors' fields of interest and expertise. While this has resulted in a range of tensions and challenges for practitioners and researchers, it is exactly in exploring and unravelling the methodological and pedagogical knots that have emerged, that we believe the potential value of participatory approaches to education is found. Keywords participation, education, environment, health, sustainability © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.