Ecological restoration based on environmental education in arid regions of the Argentinean Patagonia

Abstract

Currently, environmental education (EE) tends to construct an environment conception from diverse disciplines and their specific pedagogies, which consider and analyze the complex relationships among social systems (cultural, political, legal, economic, among others) and the natural systems (Meinardi et al., 2010). This approach contrasts with other definitions of EE based on an environment conception, where the physical-natural context prevails together with recommendations that reinforce educational processes and proposals about how to address certain topics with emphasis in the natural sciences throughout educational levels (González Gaudiano, 2003). However, the scope of EE is much broader than these two models both in theoretical as well as methodological terms. According to Sauvé (2005), it is possible to discriminate 15 tendencies in EE. This author claims that the diverse forms of conceiving EE are based on different emphasis on aspects such as contact with nature, conservationism, change in attitudes, systemic view, holistic view, scientific knowledge, humanism, moral and ethics, bioregions, social praxis, social critics, local cultures, eco-education or sustainability.