History and perspectives of development of the system of lifelong environmental education (for the 50-th anniversary of the scientific council for environmental education of the Russian Academy of Education)

the Scientific Council on environmental education of the Russian Academy of Education established in 1970 as the Problem Council for environmental education of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR commemorates the 50th anniversary since its foundation. The article highlights the contribution of this public scientific experts association into the formation of the environmental education for sustainable development, one of the priority areas of modern education. There are several opinions about the beginning of the history of the future system of lifelong environmental education (SLEE) in our country (late XIX - early XX centuries, 1960s, 1991); however, only in the second decade of the XXI century some publications describing the features of the conceptualization of general environmental education as the primary stage of development of the SLEE appeared in scientific literature. The various foundations for developing the concept of continuous general environmental education are analyzed and the expediency of a cultural approach to the design of its trans-disciplinary content is proved. The article presents the results of a survey on the cultural model application for designing the content of environmental education for sustainable development conducted in 2020 by the Scientific Council members generally confirming the main conclusions of theoretical and methodological research in recent years.