A EDUCAÇÃO AMBIENTAL NA FORMAÇÃO DE PROFESSORES EM CURSOS DAS CIÊNCIAS DA NATUREZA: ANÁLISE A PARTIR DA PEDAGOGIA HISTÓRICO-CRÍTICA

Abstract

Faced with the current socio-environmental emergency that affects human civilization and planet Earth, arising from the consequences of the social crisis and other adjacent crises of the neoliberalization process of the capitalist system, it has culminated in a society in severe crisis resulting from its way of organization and production of life, triggering the disruption of nature’s ecological and climatic dynamics. Education is the structuring axis of any society that wishes to develop citizens for its transformation, whether implementing full development of human and critical training or technical and reproductive training, taking into account the dispute that this social field has suffered since its origin. The emergence of Environmental Education takes place in a similar context, in which, guided by a critical perspective, it aims to transform the foundations of capitalist society through politicized educational processes of intervention in reality in socio-environmental problems. Our critical theoretical-pedagogical reference, being Historical-Critical Pedagogy, aims in the educational field at a formation of the human individual that, through the process of socialization at school, the student has the capacity to systematize the knowledge elaborated for their concrete formation through the essential curricular contents, bringing the essential role of the curriculum to educational institutions. This research aims to analyze the insertion of Environmental Education in natural sciences degree curriculum (physics, chemistry and biological science) to contribute to the training of teachers at a Higher Education Institution. The methodology used to analyze the Pedagogical Course Projects was the Documental Analysis, while to identify and analyze the conceptions of Environmental Education of the students and teachers of the courses, Discursive Textual Analysis was used. The data collection tools of the questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. The results indicate that Environmental Education is included in bureaucratic compliance in the documents analyzed, implementing the current legislation for this field of studies; its offer is also in line with the legislation, whether mandatory (biological sciences) or optional (physics and chemistry); we emphasize the need to review and update literary works in the field; in addition to the documents pointing to a pragmatic perspective of Environmental Education. In the questionnaire and interviews, we identified in the student body a predominance of conservationist and pragmatic conceptions, while in the teaching staff of course coordinators, conservationist, pragmatic and critical conception were evident and, finally, we identified that the teachers who teach discipline have a critical conception. It is hoped that this work and its results can contribute to future research on the inclusion of Environmental Education in the curriculum, contributing to the initial training of teachers and the development of new knowledge and interdependent values of the environmental dimension.