The last several years have witnessed a controversy within environmental education. At its center are environmental education materials sponsored by industry or non-profit environmental groups for use throughout the nation's classrooms. A variety of individuals and groups have made allegations that these materials are biased towards a particular agenda or viewpoint. While most of the criticism originates from special interest groups, rather than parents or educators, this debate has brought about significant change within environmental education programs. The state of Arizona, for example, has made sweeping cuts to both the content and funding of its public school environmental education mandate, and a number of other states, including Florida and North Carolina, are currently considering similar measures.

While the concerns about bias have gained the attention of state legislatures and independent school districts, they have found even more of an audience within the media, who have produced a flurry of articles depicting the issue in politicized terms of industry vs. the environment. Though extremely vocal in their criticism, the individuals and groups quoted in the press reports are silent about the means through which they arrive at their conclusions of bias. As for environmental educators, not only are they preoccupied with expanding their still developing field, they also lack sufficient tools for evaluating the materials for bias and related problems.

Starting with these circumstances, my thesis attempts to find a better model for thinking through this divisive issue. Utilizing existing evaluation methods in addition to communications theory and hermeneutics, or the study of interpretation, I have developed an instrument to examine materials for bias. The instrument focuses on the perspective presented by a set of materials in terms of significant characteristics of environmental issues, such as value questions, uncertainty and the social construction of environmentalism. I applied this instrument to a study sample of sponsored environmental education materials from both industry and environmental group sponsors.

As a result of my analysis, I found that many sponsored materials do display bias or flawed treatment of different perspectives. However, bias in sponsored materials is merely indicative of a larger problem within environmental education in general. From my research, I conclude that environmental education must resolve some important issues regarding the existence of differing perspectives. I recommend that teachers continue to use sponsored materials because of their potential for teaching about these differing perspectives towards environmental issues. Furthermore, I theorize that while all education contains the likelihood for bias, the vulnerability of environmental education to concerns about bias can be explained by the societal context of environmental issues.