Radiography of community environmental education

a bibliometric review of Spain, Latin America and the Caribbean (2000-2020)

Abstract

In the context of the climate crisis, there is an increase in interest and support for the community approach to environmental educational actions. Even so, there are few academic exercises, both international and Hispanic, that have allowed a synthesis of this field of study. For this reason, was carried out a bibliometric review of the research on community environmental education, written in Spanish and published in specialized magazines in the last 20 years. The Web of Science, Scopus Elsevier, Scielo, Dialnet, Redalyc and JSTOR databases were searched, including a final corpus of 151 studies. Is identified a progressive but discontinuous progression of the studies, that Cuba is the country with the most publications and that the journal with the most research was Avances. It was found that qualitative methodologies and technicals such as surveys, interviews and other participatory devices are mainly used, with community members, children and adolescents, teachers and community leaders as the main participants. Finally, in the face of the civilizational crisis,  is discussed the relevance of the communities and their environmental educational processes, and the importance of conducting synthesis research exercises that highlight the strengths and learning in the field.