Environmentalizing the curriculum: a critical dialogue of south-north framings

Abstract

The question of how the environmentalization of the curriculum might occur inthe 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 educationprograms, and has been adopted by some Brazilian public universities among othersin Latin America and Europe. This highly influential framework was developed by agroup of “Latin” academics from Europe and Latin America. We bring that frameworkinto 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 pastthirty years. We reflexively identify a number of key similarities and differences in thisSouth-North dialogue. Brazilian educators, curriculum specialists and researchers, forwhom this article is primarily written, might further refine the critical possibilitiesof the ACES framework in their efforts to environmentalize the curriculum. Morebroadly, this article exemplifies a non-colonial approach to globalizing the discourseof environmental education.