Humour and Environmental Education

This book illustrates how humour can be a powerful tool for environmental education. Hailing from eight different countries, the authors’ inquiries are grounded in a range of sites of learning and focus on different comedic forms, offering a variety of perspectives on the ways humour features, or could feature, in environmental education.

The chapters adopt an array of methodological approaches and theoretical frames, drawing not only on environmental education research and humour studies, but also scholarship in affect theory, antiracist and Indigenous education, climate change communication, critical pedagogy, ecocriticism and language arts education, feminist theory, human– animal relations, media studies, new materialisms, philosophy, psychology, public pedagogy, science education, and social movement studies. Many of the topics discussed in this volume necessitated multi- or interdisciplinary inquiries and pedagogies.

Delving into humour led the authors to push beyond the boundaries of their own disciplines and, for some, to form creative collaborations that took them not only into new academic fields but also outside their professions to work with actors, cartoonists, comedians, and game developers. This book was originally published as a special issue of Environmental Education Research.

Constance Russell is Professor in the Faculty of Education, Lakehead University, Canada where she teaches courses in environmental education, animal-focused education, and food education. She was given the 2017 Outstanding Contributions to Research in Environmental Education award by the North American Association for Environmental Education.

Patrick Chandler is an education specialist for the Climate Literacy Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN) and the Cooperative Institute for Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado, Colorado, USA. He has over fifteen years of experience working in, developing, and researching environmental education, art, stewardship, and science programs and is an expert on climate change and plastic pollution education .

Justin Dillon is professor of science and environmental education in University College London’s Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education. He taught in London schools for ten years before working at King’s College London, the University of Bristol, and the University of Exeter. Justin was President of the European Science Education Research Association from 2007 to 2011.