Discourse of sustainable development - a base of environmental education in Serbia

Abstract

Education in Serbia faces challenges of reforms and rapid adaptation to demands of global, developed environment, intensive changes in science, technology, economy, entrepreneurship and social relations in general, as well as to high standards and expectations. On the way to global integrations, education that wants to have a marker - sustainable - incorporates principles of sustainable development in its base: the principle of reconcilability with nature, economic sustainability, social justice, cultural identity, global joint work. After all the reforms and wandering around, the school recognizes that environmental, sustainable education forms a new way and style of life with relationships organized among adults and children at school and outside the school in the local community. Finally, a sustainable vision of education reform in Serbia has been focused on creation of a system that will be able to get together and engage relevant factors and respond to their actual needs. The education system that wants to have an indicator of sustainability is decentralized, efficient, effective, qualitative, and transparent; it employs highly professional, reflective, creative and motivated teaching staff; it has been focused on learning and it is a standard-based; it offers a high-quality program, promotes the culture of evaluation, self-evaluation and development of the school; it fosters fairness, ethics, tolerance, constructive communications-it is able to meet special educational needs, it has included the perspective of the lifelong learning, and it has a support of educational technologies. In essence it is a reengineering of the human spirit by mental transformations inspired by the principles of ecology and ecological engineering that needs to be implemented through sustainable environmental education. This paper will analyze whether all the opportunities offered in Serbia by environmental education are used, and what the obstacles are that need to be overcome in terms of normative principles and reduction of the gap between what "is" and what "should be" when considering the discourse of sustainable development in Serbia.