Niveles de participación de niños, niñas y adolescentes en investigaciones de educación ambiental en Hispanoamérica (1999-2019)

Historically, a whole participatory and horizontal tradition has been recognized in environmental education, even so, empirical research describes low levels of participation of children’s and adolescents in this type of education and in its research field. Despite this, there are few investigations that measure participation, limiting these to describing case studies, which hardly allows a global idea of the levels of child and adolescent participation in the field. To clarify that, a systematized bibliographic review of environmental education research written in Spanish from 1999 to 2019 was carried out, in which children and adolescents participate in different degrees of involvement. The level of participation of each of these was coded using Roger Hart’s ladder of child participation, which describes eight different rungs. This was correlated by statistical analysis and non-parametric tests with the year and country of publication, the type of education and the methodology used. The results indicate a progressive increase in the levels of child and adolescent participation from 1999 to date, as well as higher levels in non-formal environmental education, if qualitative methodologies are used to research and in authors from Argentina and Cuba. The importance of rethinking the place of children’s and adolescents in the development of environmental education and environmental education research is discussed.