Environmental Education Between Modernity and Postmodernity: Searching for an Integrating Educational Framework

Abstract

With the recent debates concerning the UNESCO's proposals of Education for sustainable development (1992, 1988) or Education for a sustainable future (1997), environmental education is confronted with the necessity of restating its aim and establishing its niche in a global educational project, whose foundations have to be reconstructed in light of of the development of responsible societies. This article presents an analysis of the epistemological, ethical and pedagogical basis of the UNESCO's recent proposals, so as to verify their offer of an appropriate integrative framework for environmental education, and other dimensions of contemporary education, that aim at the reconstruction of the person-society-environment web of relationships. This analysis is based on the referential framework of modernity and postmodernity.