What comes before participation? Searching for meaning in teachers' constructions of participatory learning in environmental education

Abstract

This chapter contributes to the debate on participatory education through examining some of the intentions and dispositions that underwrite teachers' ways of thinking and acting in educational settings. Rather than looking at participation directly, the study on which the chapter is based attempted to generate understandings of how certain teachers become disposed towards the participatory interests that are almost synonymous with environment-related education. My interest is in the assumptions and predispositions that underlie teachers' notions of what counts as participatory learning within their genealogies of context, and so this chapter explores, the aims and methods for elucidating teachers' stories of their actions within their theories of context. Keywords environmental education, participation, learning, teacher's thinking, intentionality © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.