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.
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