Abstract

This article is the result of a bibliographical review about the way in which the relationship between education and the environment was configured in University Higher Education in Latin America. It was established as a purpose to reconstruct the historical itinerary from the academic productions coming from the critical perspective of environmental thought. It focused on two of its main concerns: the interpellation about the dependent development model and the role of higher education in the way of producing and reproducing knowledge. Among the specific objectives the article aimed to identify the stages of the relationship between education and the environment in the university ambit and to reflect on the actions of curricular environmentalization that are promoted in the aforementioned level. The bibliographical corpus analyzed allowed to periodize the two major stages in the aforementioned relationship and to corroborate the historical tendency in the field: the scarce presence of interdisciplinary teams in the conformation of the teaching bodies. On the other hand, as the main finding that the initial delay of the social sciences to become environmental, in University Higher Education, is going back to the expense of the production of case studies on environmental conflicts. In Latin America, the analysis of the unequal appropriation of the common goods caused the increasing emergence of the environmental dimension in this field of science. The text concludes with the recommendation of incorporating local and regional environmental conflicts as pedagogical problems in Higher Education. They are assumed as concrete teaching-learning opportunities aimed to reflect on the theoretical and practical scope of the environmental conflicts, sustainability and development models.

Keywords Higher University Education; Environment; Curricular environmentalization; Latin America