The inception of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–14) has excited controversy over the validity of the concept of education for sustainable development (ESD), as well as reactivating a critical review of the environmental education field as a whole. This article analyzes the peculiarities of ESD, the conditions that gave rise to it, the characteristics of its proposed configuration and the implications for environmental education.
This article develops an historical and contemporary Latin-American perspective on the issues raised by Stevenson's 1987 article, 'Schooling and Environmental Education: Contradictions in Purpose and Practice'. It shows that since its inception as a pedagogical field in the 1970s, environmental education has faced many challenges and resistances in the educational systems of Latin America. An analysis of the competing and contradictory discourses of environmental education in developed and developing countries suggests that among other things, system inadequacies and malfunctions, social inequalities, the agendas of modernity and globalisation, and the hybridisation of the field (e.g. with Education for Sustainable Development, adult education, emancipatory educational and political traditions) continue to fissure the discursive identity and configurations of the field in Latin America. The article explores how this affects curricular reform and teacher professional preparation and development, in the context of a depleted conventional school curriculum and its growing inability to respond to the complex challenges of the present. Such a situation can be contrasted with deliberations on the potential articulations of environmental education with the everyday life of the community, a source of opportunity and more positive note on which the article ends.
RESUMO: O presente artigo analisa a situação da pesquisa em Educação Ambiental na América Latina. Com destaque ao México e ao Brasil, também se mencionam descrições gerais da Colômbia, de Cuba, do Equador e da Venezuela. Apresentam-se os limitados avanços da pesquisa nessa área, marcada por um processo lento, com gradual posicionamento institucional acerca da Educação Ambiental regional. O surgimento da educação para o desenvolvimento sustentável, à exceção da Colômbia, não chegou a alterar esse processo, nem tampouco a criar novas e mais favoráveis condições de impulso à pesquisa numa perspectiva sociopolítica. Apesar disso, o artigo reporta avanços positivos em direção à pesquisa na Educação Ambiental, embora não se possam esperar resultados espetaculares a curto e médio prazos, a menos que se apresente uma mudança radical da atual situação, o que não se vislumbra neste momento. Palavras-chave: Educação Ambiental; Pesquisa; Produção Acadêmica; Tendências.
RESEARCH IN ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION IN LATIN AMERICA: MAPPING TRENDS ABSTRACT:This article aims at analyzing the current state of research in Environmental Education in Latin America. With emphasis on Mexico and Brazil, it also provides general descriptions of Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador and Venezuela. We present the limited research advances in this area, characterized by a slow process, with gradual institutional positioning on regional Environmental Education. The emergence of education for sustainable development, except the Colombian case, did not change this process, nor created new and more favorable conditions to boost researches into a socio-political perspective. Nevertheless, this article reports positive progress towards researches in Environmental Education. Yet, spectacular results for a short to medium term are not to be expected, unless a radical change can be brought about in the current situation, which is not currently expected.
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