Educación ambiental: de la acción a la investigación

Resumen

Environmental education has developed greatly over the last twenty years, reflecting upon the deep contradiction between the need for human development, which means the need for scientific development and a global market economy, and the need for a better quality of life and natural environment. In the educational proposals, the action for the environment is no more separated from a deeper understanding of the way we think and from the importance given to the emotional links with our planet. This wiser way to conceive environmental education is strongly concerned with the complexity of thought and the «reductionism» implicit in many pedagogical theories and environmental claims. Environmental education could become a new way to look at education, putting together the complexity theories, the importance of making sense of ignorance and uncertainty, and the need of constructing and comparing values. This new way to conceive education claims new educational structures and consistent strategies to use in research and evaluation: the action carried out all over the world in the last years indicates the issues and the strategies environmental education research has to face.