Phase Two

Within the context described in the previous section the opportunity arose in mid 2000

to become involved in a Ministry of Education contract delivering environmental education workshops introducing the Guidelines for Environmental Education in New Zealand Schools (Ministry of Education, 1999a) to local teachers. The contract delivery involved the contractors in recruiting and training regional consortia who would run workshops with local teachers, two from each participating school. These teachers would then, within this model, be environmental education resource teachers within their schools. The workshop delivery involved two separate days, spaced at the discretion of the providers, but allowing time for teachers to trial ideas and report back in order to reflect and consolidate at the second workshop .

Despite severe misgivings about the structure of the contract I decided to become

involved at the local level and joined with other educators in the district to establish p

local consortium. A critical examination of the model is out of place here although I

elsewhere (Chapman 2003). The decision to be involved was made on a number of grounds. This was the first significant national initiative in environmental education and to stand aside from it on philosophical grounds seemed not only churlish but close to offensive in a small country like New Zealand. This decision can be viewed in the light of the 'something versus nothing' debate outline in Chapter Two. A second reason involved establishing contacts with interested local teachers that might usefully endure beyond the contract. Thirdly, and most importantly, it provided an opportunity to work with some experienced teachers and to follow their subsequent pro�ess as an extension to the research I was already pursuing. While it was clear that two six hour workshops in no way provided the depth of engagement with the field provided by the course discussed earlier, the workshops focused on the recently released Guidelines for Environmental Education (Ministry of Education, 1 999a). This support document, together with the expected greater experience, confidence and institutional standing of teachers attending the workshop might, I thought, be a productive combination and involvement in this activity could shed light on the research question.

In Phase Two, teachers involved in the workshops were invited to participate in follow-up interviews about their progress in putting environmental education into practice subsequent to the workshops. This recruitment was undertaken in the same spirit as in the previous phase, that this was a collective effort to improve practice. It was intended to interview participants soon after their second workshop, in June or July 2001 and again six months later. In the event, teacher workload at the end of year period when the second interview fell was such that it was postponed and took place in July 2002, one year later. The workshops involved two teacher 'teams' from ten schools. Of the twenty teachers attending the workshops eleven agreed to participate. Nine teachers from six schools completed the two interviews.

This second phase of the research did not start optimistically. At the first workshop, each school team planned a topic of work that they undertook to teach in the interval between the two workshops. These occurred in early March and late May, a gap of ten weeks. It was made clear that the first activity at the second workshop would involve reporting back on this topic. During Workshop Two it transpired that only one school team had undertaken the unit they planned, and, although comprehensive, it did not involve a for the environment component. The other schools had only 'talked about' what they intended to do in the future.

5.5.2 Phase Three

Having conducted workshops using the environmental education Guidelines (Ministry of Education, 1999a) with teachers on behalf of the Ministry, it occurred to me that the 'Phase One' group had a much better background in the field than the workshop teachers and might respond positively to an introduction to the Guidelines. I decided to initiate a supportive intervention with the members of the Phase One group who were available and interested. Having completed two years teaching and become formally certificated, several members of this group had headed overseas or moved to new jobs further afield. Three remained 'within range' in the central North Island and these teachers were invited to a workshop in the school mid-year break, July 2001. The intention was to provide an introduction to the Guidelines and to jointly plan two topics of work that fitted with their long-term plans for terms three and four that year. As an incentive, transport expenses were covered and lunch provided. Their undertaking was to submit to a further follow-up interview to gauge how the topics had gone in practice.

To try and strengthen the base of this effort I recruited an extra teacher into phase three. The teacher, Ina, had the same teaching experience as the other three and had participated in the same course but followed a different path. She had been in the same college cohort as the others but on finishing her teaching diploma had taken up a one year, long term relieving position in a local school. At the completion of that year she had returned to university study to complete a Batchelor of Education degree in 1999 and completed the environmental education course during that year. She had then returned to teaching in 2000. At the beginning of 2001 she had moved to a small country school fifteen kilometers from the University. In recruiting her to the group, and as a kind of catch-up activity, I asked Ina if she had been able to include environmental education in her teaching to date. On receiving a negative response I asked her to reflect on the reasons for this prior to the workshop. She obliged by submitting a page in writing that will emerge later. She reported that as a beginning teacher she felt overwhelmed by the orthodoxy of the school and that the effort required to initiate new ideas was too great. As it turned out, Ina was in the smallest school of the four Phase Three teachers and was the only one who put the units planned in this workshop into action.

At this stage I knew the background contexts of all the teachers in Phase Three and while I hoped for success, was not confident that this initiative would be fruitful. The main reason was that the status of environmental education remained unchanged and there was no external motivation to begin. Thus, at this point of the research I was beginning to search, with some sense of desperation, for ideas or insights on how to

deal with what seemed to be a complete impasse in making any impact on school or classroom practice. As a result, Phase Four of the research, described in the next section, began as a series of attempts to search for ideas.

5.5.3 Broadening the search