Environmental education and children's participation. Opportunities for the collective construction of eco-citizenship.

Abstract

Current contexts show the need for a pedagogical and civic exercise that allows us to rethink individually and collectively the relations between citizenship itself and the environment. This article aims to provide elements for reflection and eco-citizen training. To this end, it proposes an approach from a theoretical, ethical, and methodological perspectives to environmental education connected to children's participation. And vice versa. This exercise is justified in the legal, pragmatic and educational reasons for child participation. The proposal shows the ethical synergies, highlighting the objective, shared by both fields, of citizen emancipation and the formation of an eco-citizenship that is a guarantor and defender of environmental democracy. Methodologically, the crossing of both fields is fertile in the common action and the value of affectivity when problematizing the environment, from learning as a multidimensional and multidirectional process. Natural environment is defended as a scenario beneficial for the participatory action. Finally, the contributions are clarified while opening up to new research questions that should be addressed with children. This article argues that, thought together, environmental education and children's participation lead to a framework of theoretical and methodological opportunities for both fields in the construction of eco-citizenship.