Contributions to the identity of environmental education: Studies and approaches for its teaching

Abstract

In this paper, we present some basics on Environmental Education (EE) as an epistemological field of a complex network of principles, education theories and ideological approaches, and which has a goal committed to promoting learning processes involved in cultural and political transformation. The paper discusses how the dialect between theory, method and reality is what has helped to define, identify and inform studies and research in EE, processing not only in the inclusion and differentiation of knowledge involved (technological, popular, scientific, artistic, philosophical) but also in the construction of a new epistemological framework, which includes a series of knowledge to educate on environmental conflict. Our studies follow this line and seek to analyze and understand the practices of educators conducting EE in different places and educational settings, contributing to further discussion about the epistemological identity of EE. In this regard, we have been working in the search and analysis of a diverse ‘hidden and unknown pedagogy’ in relation to situated EE; thus recovering a memory of interesting learning-teaching practices about environmental issues. We believe that such intellectual production is a valuable conceptual input to characterize emerging teaching situations in environmental issues, challenging the educational arguments that teachers validate in their decisions. Considering these premises, this paper will develop three central issues. 1) strains and theoretical assumptions on EE (why and how to educate about the environment?); 2) criteria built for the formation of environmental educators and the analysis of their EE practices (what do they do and/or what do educators say they do?); and 3) basic conceptual nuclei/cores that make it possible to rethink the dimensions and approaches that define those innovative practices in environmental education (what should an environmental educator know and what should he be able to do?).