Supporting you to get the most out of Payne's article via this written debrief.
Payne writes about a 'critical ecological ontology for educational inquiry' where he suggests that much educational inquiry (education about content) is driven by the desire for humans to understand about themselves rather than the desire for understanding about the environment in and of itself.
Critical - desiring of change (working towards changing the current situation)
Ecological - for the environment as a whole, not a sum of the parts and certainly not focusing just on human needs
Ontology - our ways of being in the world (Epistemology - our ways of knowing)
Educational inquiry - research into educational practice (with the recognition that theory IS practice and vice verse... praxis)
A critical ecological ontology addresses the "persistent problem of a theory-practice gap in environmental education" (p 134).
Phenomenology - the lived experience (what is it like to be a ???)
He also suggests that environmental education should/could explore what it is like to live, our everyday actions or interactions, and how our living, in fact, is the very cause for environmental and social devastation. So that if we sought understanding about what it means for us to practice living the way we do (thinking about it from within ourselves) we might develop deeper (better) understandings about the effects our choices have on the environment (and us as part of the environment).
We (humans) ARE the environmental problem/s. We will benefit from looking at the environment from within ourselves, as we are also part of the environment. Environmental education has often looked at environmental issues as separate to humans, where it is the interaction between humans and our environment that is where the problems lie. He offers a point of re-focus for environmental education to consider.
He calls this inwards (re)focus - embodiment. The students consider them selves and the environment, separately and together.
He presents an activity he asks his third year pre-service teacher preparation students to participate in... "the central question is
how the (experiencing) body (in actions and interactions) might be used as a localised 'site' for understanding, explaining and acting on 'embodied' environmental problems, issues or matters. Students' 'voices' are used in this paper to best represent individual inquiries into and deliberations about the connections, or lack of, between embodiment, environment and praxis." (p 134).
Detail is described in Embodiment and Environmental Education (p 137). "'Can my body be used as a "site" for describing how the "ecological crisis" is remade or challenged by my actions and interactions?' Students were asked to select one 'conventional' action typical of their own daily routines and explain how the embodiment of that action over time and space effects 'nature'."
Student stories are shared in the section Embodiment (p 140), Embodiment and Information (p 141), Embodiment and Nature (p 142), Embodiment, Nature and Reflection (p 143), Embodiment, Nature and Praxis (p 145), and Theorising Embodiment, Nature and Praxis (p 148). And then there is the concluding story about Ned and his gold necklace (p 151).
Payne holds an ecocentric ontology - where he believes that as a human he is part of the environment, not apart from it. The other end of this spectrum is an anthropocentric view - where humans are what really matter most on this planet.