This article analyses the production of knowledge present in the relation between the fields of adult and environmental education in non-school projects and practices, embodied in 39 dissertations and theses produced in Brazilian universities between 1988 and 2006. The analysis of these theses and dissertations reasserts the need to listen to the signs of nature through the voice of persons from the popular classes in their interactions in different social practices, given the new challenges posed by the development of man's 'interventions' in the equilibrium of man-nature relations. The researchers' intentionality in presenting proposals for action, either by proposing new public policies or in the introduction of changes to be implemented in diverse communities and social movements became clearly evident in the balance of production. This analysis calls attention to the fact that the theoretical and methodological instruments used in research do not always perceive the relation between academic knowledge and that of those populations under study.
youth and adult education; environmental education