Análisis de la incidencia de la educación ambiental para el desarrollo sostenible en las revistas científicas españolas

Authors

María Novo VillaverdeSalto de línea María José Bautista-Cerro Ruiz Salto de línea Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia. Facultad de Educación. Madrid, España.

DOI

10.4438/1988-592X-RE-2012-358-176

Abstract

Analysis of the Prevalence of Environmental Education for Sustainable Development in Spanish Scientific Journals

This study focuses on analyzing the prevalence of environmental education for sustainable development in eight of the main scientific journals on education published in Spain between 2001 and 2010. In doing so, the study seeks to offer a diachronic view of scientific productivity in this sphere, to conduct a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data obtained and, lastly, to produce information that could be used by the scientific community interested in this movement in education. A two-stage approach was applied to the research process. In the first stage of the study, all the issues and articles of the selected scientific journals were reviewed in order to identify the articles focussing on environmental education and sustainable development. Afterwards, the research process applied a scientometric analysis for the quantitative analysis, which enabled a differentiated diachronic view of the published articles to be taken. The use of this method to quantify the analyzable bibliographic information made it possible to identify the main research groups working with environmental education in Spanish universities. Subsequently, in a second qualitative phase, the study focussed on analyzing text content, obtaining information about the topics of interest and the trends displayed by the different lines of work. The results made it possible to detect the productivity of environmental education for sustainable development in the outlined scientific sphere as well as the shortcomings and weaknesses that ought to be addressed. In the light of the study’s findings, it may be said that this sphere is firmly established in the academic community, with a maturity that consolidates it as a line of research in several Spanish universities. In terms of weaknesses, the study detected a lack of dissemination of experience in good practices and a lack of empirical and applied research, a pursuit that the authors think should be encouraged.

Keywords

Environmental education, sustainable development, scientometric analysis, content analysis, scientific journals, quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis.