Abstract

PAYNE, Phillip G.  and  RODRIGUES, Cae. Environmentalizing the curriculum: a critical dialogue of south-north framings. Perspectiva [online]. 2012, vol.30, n.02, pp.411-444. ISSN 0102-5473.

The question of how the environmentalization of the curriculum might occur in the higher education sector in a sustainable manner has become a local, national, regional and global concern for environmental educators, specifically, and educators, generally. The contemporary ACES framework includes ten characteristics of “environmentalization” deemed appropriate for incorporation into teacher education programs, and has been adopted by some Brazilian public universities among others in Latin America and Europe. This highly influential framework was developed by a group of “Latin” academics from Europe and Latin America. We bring that framework into critical dialogue with the development of the “socially critical” and “post-critical” perspectives in environmental education curriculum and framings of its research, as this critical discourse has developed in the Anglo-speaking North over the past thirty years. We reflexively identify a number of key similarities and differences in this South-North dialogue. Brazilian educators, curriculum specialists and researchers, for whom this article is primarily written, might further refine the critical possibilities of the ACES framework in their efforts to environmentalize the curriculum. More broadly, this article exemplifies a non-colonial approach to globalizing the discourse of environmental education.

Keywords : Environmental Education; Curriculum Theory; Higher Education.

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