Evaluación de estudios sobre Educación Ambiental enfocadas en Áreas Protegidas del Ecuador: Análisis de tendencia, desafíos y oportunidades

Abstract

Abstract: In order to better understand how Environmental Education is developed in different contexts and with the application of diverse methodologies, this research work analyzes studies conducted in Ecuador on Environmental Education in protected areas. Likewise, it seeks to identify the challenges and opportunities that such research entails, which is based on qualitative approaches for its design, through a bibliographic analysis that allowed for the achievement of the objectives and the obtaining of the results. The most relevant data in the aforementioned results has been the identification that only 26.4% of protected areas have studies on Environmental Education, which are concentrated mainly in National Parks, highlighting the need for research on the topic to be expanded to other areas. The results also revealed that the pedagogical strategies employed have a formative and participatory approach oriented exclusively towards the transmission of knowledge, without giving greater scope to community-based experiential and meaningful learning strategies. It can be concluded, then, that although Environmental Education in protected areas of Ecuador has been developing, it is necessary to strengthen the applied methodologies to achieve and promote intercultural integration and its institutionalization, which in turn would improve the impact of these strategies and achieve.