Educational Practice in Education for Environmental Justice: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Abstract

The environmental crisis makes it necessary to reconsider the practices of environmental education (EE) and guide them towards a transformative perspective to promote critical reflection and the ability to make decisions in the face of complex problems, including a perspective of justice. Using the PRISMA systematic review protocol, this article analysed 49 classroom intervention published on international journals to identify the limitations when working on EE in early childhood education, primary education, and pre-service teacher training classrooms from an environmental justice (EJ) perspective. Considering the variables “contents”, “depth of the interventions”, “actions required of students”, and “resources”, the results show a predominance of interventions that promote content knowledge from an ecological perspective and demand actions far removed from reflection and participation, using self-made materials. By not encouraging students to reflect on environmental issues in a holistic way to change their behaviour, it was confirmed that they move away from systems thinking, critical literacy, and action competence. Therefore, there is a lack of integration of the EJ perspective in classroom practices. To achieve educational success in terms of social change for environmental protection, it is necessary to promote research work focused on the didactics of EE including a social justice perspective.

Is Consuming Avocados Equally Sustainable Worldwide? An Activity to Promote Eco-Social Education from Science Education

“…This is very positive, considering that previous studies have highlighted the uncritical and conformist attitudes of student teachers [28]. Such attitudes may be due to shortcomings in teacher training, where activities that awaken the critical sense are usually not developed [24], although when they are developed, they are positively valued by students [53]. All of this reflects the need to design and implement activities, such as those presented in this paper, that promote the development of critical thinking and the skills associated with it, including deciding, reasoning, solving problems, or arguing [54], in order to question and transform the dominant models.…”

“…Thus, teachers have mainly focused on presenting issues related to knowledge of the natural environment and universal solutions for protecting the planet. They suggest behaviors that involve loving nature [23,24]. In this sense, these topics have rarely been addressed from a global and controversial perspective [22], as required by recent Spanish educational regulations, including Organic Law 3/2020, RD 95/2022 and RD 157/2022.…”