From the perspective that the school is an important space for the construction of knowledge, responsible for the formation of citizens who are critical and active in the society in which they live, this text, which presents part of a quantitative-qualitative research, aims to reflect, through the identification of social representations, on the understanding that school managers of municipal schools, which serve early childhood and elementary education, in the municipality of Diadema, in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, present about the term “sustainable development” , considering the hypothesis that such professionals exert influence on school actions. The Theory of Social Representations and the Central Nucleus Theory were used as theoretical references. These data were collected using the free word recall technique. In a questionnaire administered, respondents indicated words that came to mind for the inducing theme “sustainable development”, and subsequently constructed a sentence in which they used the words evoked for the theme in question. Data processing was carried out through prototypical and content analysis. The results suggest a tendency towards understanding a more conservationist vision regarding the society/environment relationship, with citations focused on nature preservation and actions to resolve environmental problems. Based on these data, we sought to reflect on how environmental education in the school environment can contribute to debate about the construction of a sustainable society.