Prof Bob Stevenson ~ Adjunct Professor

Professor Bob Stevenson joined The Cairns Institute in 2010 as a Tropical Research Leader (Education for Environmental Sustainability) until his retirement in December, 2016. His prior 20-year academic career was based in the USA at the University at Buffalo, New York,  including terms as Head/Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy and Co-Director of the Graduate School of Education’s Collaborative Research Network. He began his career as a high school teacher in Sydney before becoming a K-12 curriculum and professional development specialist in environmental education in Education Queensland.

Bob was founding Director of the Centre for Research and Innovation in Sustainability Education at JCU. He was lead editor of Engaging Environmental Education: Learning, Culture and Agency (Sense, 2011) and the International Handbook of Research in Environmental Education (AERA/Routledge, 2013) and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Environmental Education (the oldest journal in the field) from 2014-2018, after being an Executive Editor from 2008-2013 and now continuing his involvement as an editorial board member.  He also serves on the editorial boards of the Australian Journal of Environmental Education, Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, and Environmental Education Research.

Interests

Research

• Professor Stevenson’s research has focused on theory-policy-practice relationships in environmental/ sustainability education and its history and marginalized status as an educational reform in K-12 schooling. He has critically examined international and national policies and discourses and developed seminal explanations of the discrepancies between policies and practice in environmental education, arguing for more inclusive and participatory approaches to policy formulation. His current research interests center on the current and potential sites of learning about issues of environmental sustainability by young people and how schools, peers, electronic media and the home, are being used and can be constructively used to work toward a more sustainable and just society. In particular, are concerns for supporting youth to engage with their local communities in learning and action on the climate crisis. Other research interests are school leadership and capacity building, including school-community partnerships and teacher professional development (particularly their use of theory, research findings and action research methodology for understanding and improving their practice) for environmental sustainability education. His methodological expertise is in case study and qualitative research as well as in participatory action and collaborative research approaches.

Research Disciplines

• Education policy, sociology and philosophy (3902)
• Specialist studies in education (3904)
• Climate change impacts and adaptation (4101)

Socio-Economic Objectives

• education and training (1699)
• Teaching and curriculum (1603)

Awards

• 2018 - Fellow, Australian Association for Environmental Education for "elevating environmental education in Australia"
• 2016 - TropEco Staff Excellence Award for contributions to sustainability, James Cook University
• 2010 - Recipient of the North American Association for Environmental Education 2010 Award for Outstanding Contributions in Research in Environmental Education.

These are the most recent publications associated with this author. To see a detailed profile of all publications stored at JCU, visit ResearchOnline@JCU. Hover over Altmetrics badges to see social impact.

Journal Articles

• Stevenson R (2022) Climate movements, learning and the politics of climate action in Australia. Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 62 (3). pp. 424-443
• Acton R, Salter P, Lenoy M and Stevenson R (2017) Conversations on cultural sustainability: stimuli for embedding Indigenous knowledges and ways of being into curriculum. Higher Education Research & Development, 36 (7). pp. 1311-1325
• Evans N, Stevenson R, Lasen M, Ferreira J and Davis J (2017) Approaches to embedding sustainability in teacher education: a synthesis of the literature. Teaching and Teacher Education, 63 (2017). pp. 405-417
• Mwaniki F and Stevenson R (2017) Farmers’ uses of indigenous knowledge and practices to cope with climate change in Kilifi County, Kenya. International Journal of Climate Change: impacts and responses, 9 (4). pp. 53-65
• Smith G and Stevenson R (2017) Sustaining education for sustainability in turbulent times. Journal of Environmental Education, 48 (2). pp. 79-95
• Stevenson R, Nicholls J and Whitehouse H (2017) What is climate change education? Curriculum Perspectives, 37 (1). pp. 67-71
• Evans N, Ferreira J, Davis J and Stevenson R (2016) Embedding EfS in teacher education through a multi-level systems approach: lessons from Queensland. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 32 (1). pp. 65-79

Book Chapters

• Adam R, Whitehouse H, Stevenson R and Chigeza P (2019) The socioecological (un)learner: unlearning binary oppositions and the wicked problems of the Anthropocene. In: Touchstones for Deterritorializing Socioecological Learning: the Anthropocene, posthumanism and common worlds as creative milieux. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, Switzerland, pp. 49-74
• Stevenson R, Mannion G and Evans N (2018) Childhoodnature pedagogies and place: an overview and analysis. In: Research handbook on childhoodnature: Assemblages of childhood and nature research. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham, Switzerland
• Stevenson R and Smith G (2018) Environmental educators learning and theorizing place-responsive pedagogy. In: Diverse Pedagogies of Place: educating students in and for local and global environments. Routledge Research in Education. Routledge, Abingdon, UK, pp. 190-210
• Stevenson R, Wals A, Heimlich J and Field E (2017) Critical environmental education. In: Urban Environmental Education. Cornell University Press, New York, NY, USA, pp. 51-58
• Dale A, Vella K, Potts R, Voyce B, Stevenson B, Cottrell A, King D, Babacan H, Boon H, Gooch M and Pert P (2016) Applying social resilience concepts and indicators to support climate adaptation in tropical North Queensland, Australia. In: Climate Adaptation Governance in Cities and Regions: theoretical fundamentals and practical evidence. Wiley, Chichester, UK, pp. 23-43

More

ResearchOnline@JCU stores 52+ research outputs authored by Prof Bob Stevenson from 2006 onwards.

The map shows research collaborations by institution from the past 7 years.
Note: Map points are indicative of the countries or states that institutions are associated with.