180termos de desenvolvimento sustentável, ao consolidar no conteúdo curricular os potenciais educativos das dimensões ambientais, tecnológicas, ético-educativas, sociais e econômicas da sustentabilidade. Também são apresentados exemplos de como maximizar o desenvolvimento de certos indicadores do processo de formação profissional nestes cursos, orientados para um desempenho favorável com relação aos problemas de energia, de uso de materiais, do meio-ambiente e do desenvolvimento social.Palavras-chave: ciência da sustentabilidade; educação para a sustentabilidade; ciências básicas; formação de engenheiros. SuStainability, engineering and the teaChing of baSiC SCienCeS: a frame of theoretiCal ConCeptSAbstract. The article presents an extensive bibliography review about education for sustainability in engineering majoring, based on the teaching of basic sciences, namely Physics, Mathematics and Chemistry. It also reveals how the study of the interactions between society and nature evolved from environmental conceptions towards sustainable development and sciences of sustainability and correspondingly, environmental education evolves towards education for sustainability and education in sciences of sustainability. Furthermore this work explains how to train engineering students, through the teaching of basic sciences, so as to favor sustainable development in their future professional performance, by emphasizing the educational potentialities, in the curricular content, of the environmental, technological, ethical, social and economic dimensions of sustainability for this type of careers. Examples are also given on how to enhance the development of some indicators in the formative process of engineers, focused in energy problems, the use of materials, the environment and the social development.