“Our Voice Matters … If They Allow It”: Ecochildism–Sentipensante as a Praxis for Capability Expansion and Epistemic Justice in Colombian Sustainable Education

ABSTRACT Educational institutions often operate within adult-centred frameworks that limit the meaningful participation of children, reducing their involvement to tokenistic and merely symbolic forms. As a result, such constraints not only obscure their voices but also perpetuate epistemic injustices by denying them recognition as agents capable of generating knowledge and contributing to the understanding and transformation of Colombia’s contemporary socio-ecological challenges. In response to this panorama, the article proposes ecochildism – sentipensante as a conceptual framework aimed at overcoming both adultcentrism and tokenism, while simultaneously seeking to expand children’s capabilities within the field of education for sustainability. This approach integrates childism – which questions the hierarchical relations that subordinate children’s perspectives – with sentipensamiento, a decolonial epistemic stance that invites us to “think with the heart and feel with the head”. In this way, both elements converge in the defence of children as epistemic agents capable of co-constructing more equitable and sustainable futures. Consequently, by examining the structural mechanisms that reproduce epistemic marginalisation and by positioning the expansion of children’s capabilities as a central pedagogical praxis, the article argues that ecochildism – sentipensante represents a transformative pathway towards more inclusive, relational, and critically engaged forms of sustainable education in the Colombian context.