ABSTRACT
The environmental and interdisciplinary nature of environmental education presents extraordinary challenges to our abilities as a field to clearly conceptualize, theorize and communicate findings about what we have learned about practice, research and theory in environmental learning (Disinger, 2001). Unfortunately, these factors also make it difficult for practitioners to identify research-based advice on what we know about the principles and practices of environmental learning, and for researchers and observers to understand what we agree and disagree about in our research. These problems contribute to what appears to be a lack of general understanding of an important point for environmental educators-that inquiry in environmental education has identified a body of warranted judgements about learners that is useful for guiding work with them. This is the case despite the need for substantial research into the experiences of learners, learning and teaching in environmental education (Rickinson, 2001). In this vignette, I summarize these key recommendations and set out the case for the importance of developing a working epistemology to help us resolve the apparent contradiction between, on the one hand, the view that we do have adequate evidence to guide our work, and on the other, the view that we need much more research and inquiry regarding these matters.
