Environmental Education is History: The Extent to Which Modern History Education Adopts Characteristics of Socially Critical Environmental Education1

This paper summarises a research study that investigated the potential of the Queensland secondary school subject Modern History to adopt characteristics of socially critical environmental education (SCEE). The study arose out of my own classroom practice. While teaching Modern History in Queensland schools, I found the dividing line between human problems and environmental ones was often blurred. In fact, by studying the evolving conflicts of race, gender, class and ideology, Modern History students were actually exposed to some of the dominant values conflicts that socially critical environmental educators also seek to address. The research study focuses on two aspects of modern history education: Queensland’s Modern History syllabus and Queensland Modern History teachers. Two research questions were posed: 1. Does Queensland’s Modern History syllabus allow environment to become a focus of students’ work, and does it allow teachers to explore environmental issues in a socially critical way? 2. How receptive are Modern History teachers to including environment in their work programs, and to what extent could their teaching be termed socially critical? Abstract This paper reports on a research study that investigated the extent to which the Queensland secondary school subject Modern History adopts characteristics of socially critical environmental education. The study found that while the Modern History syllabus gives ample opportunities for students to focus their inquiries on environment, Modern History teachers had overlooked this aspect of the syllabus. More positive findings of this research are that both the syllabus and teachers adopt many characteristics of socially critical environmental education. In particular, the values, political and emancipatory characteristics feature strongly in both policy and practice. To a lesser extent, both the holistic and issuesbased characteristics are represented. Finally, this research study shows that the action characteristic, as defined in socially critical environmental education, is clearly neglected. Despite this, there is a case to be made for Modern History to be used as a vehicle for socially critical environmental education in Queensland schools.