ABSTRACT
In this article I embark on a praxiological journey-to reflect on a research studytaking as my central theme the notion of social research as activism. The research study was a critical ethnography of a school and community engaged in a socially critical approach to environmental education. The study was conducted during a
three-year period from 1993 to 1995 and culminated in the development of four interrelated narratives. The first narrative is a description of the environmental education program within the school and community context. The second and third narratives consist of two participants’ stories. The final narrative is the researcher’s story as recorded in her journal. The central substantive thesis advanced through the study was that a participatory research approach to social critically environmental education is capable of empowering communities to collective environmental action in support of environmentalism as a social movement. As critical ethnographer I adopted a critical perspective in the development of the four narratives and embraced the multiple roles of critical researcher and participant as environmental activist. The central focus of this article is the development of an argument for an activist approach to environmental education research drawing on the parallels that exist between feminist educational research and environmental education research. To orient the reader I have started the article with a short summary of the context and the environmental education project which was the focus of the research study.
