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 soci-eties. This article presents an analysis of the epistemological, ethical and pedagogical basis of the UNESCO’s recent propos-als, 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 post-modernity.