ABSTRACT
I hesitated when I was first asked to contribute to this collection to discuss the implications of articles by Louise Chawla (1998) and Karen Malone (1999a) for ‘doing research’. What immediately came to mind was my memory of an, at times, antagonistic debate following the publication of a special issue of Environmental Education Research on significant life experience (SLE) research (Volume 4(4), 1998; and part of Volume 5(2), 1999) that included Chawla’s paper. Did I really want to jump into that particular fray? Further, from my memory of the papers, the connections between Chawla and Malone seemed tenuous. Once I reread both articles and the debate about significant life experiences research that followed that original special issue, I realized that I did indeed have something I wanted to say. For me, one of the most interesting implications of these two papers for environmental education research is the issues they raise about the challenges of working across and with methodological difference.
