Going to action? A literature review on educational proposals in formal Environmental Education

Abstract

The current state of the planet’s environmental deterioration calls for formal educational contexts to implement effective environmental proposals which nurture action competence. The aim of this paper is to examine the educational proposals in formal contexts that have been published in the two research journals of greatest impact on Environmental Education during the period 2008–2013, and to analyse how they contribute to the development of action competence. Special attention is paid to research (i) based on real participation by students; (ii) promotes reflection on the complexity of environmental issues; (iii) facilitates critical thinking; (iv) encourages autonomous and responsible decision-making and (v) involves communities. Our results show that these approaches can help improve the development of action-focused environmental education and bring to light a series of challenges for future research.

Keywords:

• action competence
• educational proposals
• environmental education research
• formal educational contexts

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In this section the most important characteristics of the investigations are described. The results allow only the exploration of trends in the field of research proposals in formal EE contexts.

Additional information

Funding

This research forms part of project [2012-PN132], funded by Ministry of Science and Innovation.