Examining Changes in Teachers’ Discourse and Communication During an Interdisciplinary Environmental Education Programme

This study examines the change in teachers’ discourse patterns and communication approaches during an environmental education programme, which is based on an interdisciplinary approach. This study is important because it offers a different perspective for researchers studying environmental education and encourages the exploration of alternative approaches to developing teachers’ discourse and communication practices. The study was conducted with four teachers working in the same school and employed a qualitative action research design. The research lasted for a total of 15 weeks. The environmental education programme covering the 12 weeks of the research was structured by considering the interdisciplinary approach, experiential learning cycle model and cognitive apprenticeship approaches. The research data comprised video recordings and classroom observation notes. Discourse analysis was used to determine classroom discourse patterns and communicative approaches. It was found that all of the teachers mostly used the triadic discourse pattern and the interactive‒authoritative approach as a communication approach.