the 'thalweg' of currents: 'naturalist' environmental education

abstract

this paper aims to (re)consider environmental education (ee) through the lens of a mystery/knowledge continuum. it revisits the currents of ee identified by lucie sauvé and juxtaposes these with a typology of the senses of mystery. philosophically and theoretically informed, the paper concludes that a naturalist current of ee optimally invokes a skeptical-sacred sense of mystery, where knowledge is in relation to mystery. a naturalistic current of ee offers a distinct way of considering reality, which has implications for ee and its constituents: thinking, pedagogy, learning, and curriculum. of sauvé’s fifteen established currents of ee, we argue that a naturalist current could serve as the thalweg, or valley-way, of currents of ee for metaphoric, etymological, philosophica (epistemological and ontological), and educational reasons.