Gendering Environmental Education Reform: Identifying the Constitutive Power of Environmental Discourses

Abstract

This study was undertaken to examine the ways, and to what extent, boys and girls entering school have positioned themselves in relation to discourses about the environment and the implications this has for environmental education. I was inspired by Davies (1989) and Davies' and Banks' (1992) studies of the ways in which gender was constituted through the discursive practices of girls and boys and the ‘… political implications of the ways in which children are constrained by the dominant gender discourses …’ (Davies and Banks 1992, p. 2). I was also influenced by the current ecofeminist scholarship that looks at the political implications of the perceived right in Western cultures to dominate the non-human.While I am anxious to avoid labelling the children as masculine and feminine based on their biological sex it is interesting to note that in my study of young children's perceptions of environment the discourses of male ‘culture’ ascendancy were more often taken up by boys, while the marginalised discourses that opposed culture as ascendant were more often taken up by girls. I am concerned with the implications of these gendered constructions of environment for girls, nature and environmental education reform.