Abstract. The new ideology of education for sustainable development requests comprehension. The analysis is needed to understand the following: where are we now and where should be? What are the growing points? The key point in the analysis is seen as the answer to the question what qualitative resources in school can be used and developed for education for sustainable development. In that context among other things it is essential to consider pedagogical potentialities of project activity and its development by means of cognitive metaphor possessing heuristic, motivational, evaluative and other potentials. It requires new structures of didactic unit in education for sustainable development including objectification of «environmental axiom» -metaphorical thought form of ecological imperative. (E.N. Dzyatkovskaya).