Environmental education from a postcolonial perspective: Analyzing the influence of UNESCO's discourse on the Ontario elementary science curriculum

Abstract

Over the past three decades curriculum scholars have failed to address environmental education through joint local, national, and/or global research initiatives, leaving UNESCO as an underpinning force in legitimizing and institutionalizing environmental education globally. This critical discourse analysis examines the connection between UNESCO's historical discourse on environmental education and the Ontario elementary science and technology curriculum. As a study grounded in curriculum theory, it leads to a nuanced understanding of the extent to which the local discourse reinscribes and/or subverts the global discourse on environmental education. The study also engages a postcolonial deconstruction of the discourse, exploring how the global and local discursive trends work to colonize or decolonize our relationship with the environment. This study reveals that what is important is not whether or not UNESCO's dominant discourse on environmental education is reinscribed and/or subverted in the local curriculum. But, rather how both contribute to the complicated discussion on environmental education.