Critical Pedagogies and Environmental Education in the Bachelor’s Degree in Economics: Between Instrumentalization and Transformation

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.22533/at.ed.515727262403

• Palavras-chave: environmental education; critical pedagogies; critical hermeneutics; curriculum; economics; sustainability.

• Keywords: environmental education; critical pedagogies; critical hermeneutics; curriculum; economics; sustainability.

• Abstract:

  The contemporary socio-environmental crisis has catalyzed the institutionalization of environmental education (EE) in universities; however, its curricular and pedagogical implementation is often trapped in a technocratic logic that reduces the environment to an externality and promotes fragmented practices lacking critical reflection. This article analyzes the perspective and practices of EE in a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico from the perspective of critical pedagogies, with the aim of showing how an instrumental rationality limits education for sustainability and of outlining paths for its transformative reorientation. A critical epistemological approach is adopted using critical hermeneutics methodology, combining a literature review, open dialogues with administrators, faculty, and students from the 2023A semester, and a qualitative analysis supported by constant comparison coding and the use of ATLAS.ti. The results reveal an institutional epistemic axis aligned with the notion of “sustainable development” and the 2030 Agenda; the absence of environmental education (EE) as a cross-cutting theme in the curriculum, where the environment appears subordinate to neoclassical economics; and training practices centered on campaigns or brigades that fail to achieve critical reflection or transformative praxis. Based on this triangulation, the category “critical transformative environmental education” is proposed as a pedagogical orientation that integrates consciousness, ethics, freedom, resistance, and transformative e , with concrete guidelines for curriculum, teaching, and university administration. Implications for education in Economics are discussed, and limitations and future lines of research are proposed.