Among the strategies taken by environmental education at primary and secondary schools (basic schooling) in Brazil there is the need to think of its insertion through school curricula. This is linked to teacher education, among others. According to the LDB (National Educational Bases and Guidelines Law, n. 9.394/96) that kind of education must happen in higher levels. Considering that those teachers are trained especially during teaching degree courses, this article aims to problematize the initial undergraduate education of teachers and to reflect on their role in environmental education at basic schools. It talks about the curricular insertion of environmental education under the perspective of full human development and teachers' training as protagonist environmental educators of this process. Taking the Historical-Critical Pedagogy as reference, which considers that the role of schools is to systematize the knowledge elaborated by the culture, the article also brings to light some analysis on the basic school teacher educational policy in teaching degree courses.
school environmental education; school curricula; teacher education