ABOUT
Phillip’s research and teaching promotes a practice theory of environmental education. His commitment to a reconstructive praxis makes an original contribution to the evidence-based literature on ecologically sustainable education. Dr. Payne’s academic work extends the founding principles of Environmental Education that were established in various United Nations conferences in the 1970s. Phillip’s 1993 doctoral thesis was titled “A critical ecological ontology for environmental education”. It brought together critical pedagogy in schooling, the everyday agencies and historical embeddedness of human and other-than-human beings, and the then nascent field of environmental ethics and ecopolitics. His synthesis informs curriculum, pedagogical and policy development. Phillip’s doctoral study drew on the philosophy of education, post-Marxist critiques of nature and society, environmental philosophy (including ecofeminism) and philosophy of technology. His ongoing praxis (agency, actions, interactions), including experiential learning in various scapes and scales of Nature, ‘embodies’ a “slow ecopedagogy”. As does his research.
Dr Payne’s ecocentric philosophy of Environmental Education is grounded in empirically-driven research. His meta-methodology develops a stratified politics of inquiry. ‘Layers’ of praxis are accessed through interpretations and representations of environment-human encounters and nature-culture relations as these recur in the lived experiences and social ecology of the phenomena under study. Dr Payne’s locally-globally scaled ‘politics of knowledge generation and production’ is sociologically and anthropologically located in the ‘historical-materialist’, ‘critical-realist’, ‘geo-epistemological’ and ‘ecophenomenological’ framings of interpretive inquiry found in the critical social sciences and environmental studies. A central purpose of this eclectic approach to inquiry, explanation and critique is to clarify the presuppositions made about how the triad of ontology~axiology~epistemology shapes methodological deliberations in (re)solving ecopedagogical problems responsive to an eco/somaesthetics~environmental ethics~ecopolitics of education.
Phillip’s long-standing commitment to intergenerational and cross cultural justices (environmental, ecological, social, local, global, planetary) incorporates a critique of how the global North-digitalized and platformed knowledge mediations of environmental education research are ‘fast’ colonizing South discourses, including Indigenous practices. And why, and by whom, as well as for what? Over the past decade in various journal Special Issues, Dr Payne has pioneered the methodological use of ‘assemblages’ in slow and pluralistically stratified approaches to the representation and legitimation of environmental education research. This collectivist experiment in reassembling the politics of inquiry asserts a ‘turn’ away from the dominant methodological individualisms of research and practice assumed in most academic forums.
Phillip is an Independent Scholar and Adjunct Professor in Education at Monash University, Australia. At Monash, he Chaired the “Movement, Environment & Community” and “Education, Environment & Sustainability “Faculty Research Groups. He was Head of Sport and Outdoor Recreation Studies. Previously, Phillip was Deputy Head of School of Education (Research) and Head of Department of Outdoor Education at La Trobe University, Bendigo. In 1983, he led the theorization (Aldo Leopold and John Dewey) and accreditation of the Bachelor of Arts (Outdoor Education) at La Trobe; the first undergraduate degree in Environmental Outdoor Education in the southern hemisphere. In 1987, Phillip was the Principal Writer of the Victorian Certificate of Education “Outdoor Education Study Design” for Year 11 and 12 secondary school students within the Human Development Field of Study (Physical Education, Health Education, Home Economics).
Dr Payne is a past Editor of the Australian Journal of Environmental Education, Environmental Education Research and The Journal of Environmental Education. He has successfully supervised 20 postgraduate research theses. Phillip was Visiting Professor/Scholar in Environmental Education Research at the University of Bath (UK), Kings College (UK), Royal Danish School of Education Studies (Denmark), University of Uppsala (Sweden), University of Regina (Canada), University of Montana (USA), Hokkaido University (Japan), Simon Fraser University (Canada), University of Sao Carlos (Brazil), University of Sergipe (Brazil) and Beijing Normal University (China).