In a time when environmental responsibility is increasingly discussed, with several legal initiatives and a great variety of civic movements, the understanding of environmental problems, together with the capacity and willingness to solve them is gaining more importance. The means of getting acquainted with and learning about these issues are diverse, and are commonly named as environmental education. With a vast background in the pedagogical and the non-governmental sector, environmental education became the subject of several policies, legal and political instruments. Despite the evidences of its positive outcomes, environmental education is still underrepresented in the school curricula. Addressing the problem of this inappreciation, this paper brings together several international documents, theories and studies showing the development and the positive outcomes of environmental education, in the hope of contributing to the widespread of its consideration in the pedagogical and non-pedagogical scientific community. The message stressed out is that: (i) In order to bring out its full potential, environmental education has to be considered not as a disparate discipline, but integrated and run throughout other disciplines and everyday life. (ii) A better and ideally direct communication of environmental knowledge between the scientific community and educational practitioners is of key importance in preventing misinformation and the development of misconceptions. (iii) Environmental knowledge contributes to the formation of a sound ecological thinking and moral judgement, hopefully also leading to change in behaviour and the formation of environmentally committed communities.

在越来越多地讨论环境责任的时代，通过多项法律举措和各种各样的公民运动，对环境问题的理解以及解决这些问题的能力和意愿变得越来越重要。认识和了解这些问题的方法多种多样，通常被称为环境教育。在教育和非政府部门具有广泛的背景，环境教育已成为若干政策，法律和政治手段的主题。尽管有积极成果的证据，但环境教育在学校课程中仍然没有得到足够的重视。为了解决这种不了解的问题，本文汇集了一些国际文件，理论和研究显示了环境教育的发展和积极成果，希望为环境教育在教育学和非教育科学界的广泛考虑做出贡献。强调的信息是：（i）为了发挥其全部潜力，环境教育不应被视为一门独立的学科，而应被整合并贯穿于其他学科和日常生活中。（ii）在科学界和教育从业者之间更好地，理想地直接交流环境知识，对于防止错误信息和产生错误观念至关重要。（iii）环境知识有助于形成健全的生态思想和道德判断，