Representações sociais sobre educação ambiental: percepções de estudantes de licenciatura em uma instituição de educação superior

Abstract

Population growth and human action have caused various impacts and imbalances on the environment. From the verification of the existence of an environmental crisis, the discussions of the environmental problems arising from the anthropic action on the environment were expanded. In this context, the concept of environmental education emerges, which aims to develop an integrated understanding of the environment and the relationships that are established, with the intention of forming environmentally critical subjects by stimulating responsible practices. Its versatile character allows it to be promoted in different environments. In this scenario, the environmental educator performs it based on their knowledge, representations and intentions. The objective of this work was to identify the Social Representations of students from four graduation courses; Biology, Physics, Chemistry and Geography on Environmental Education, exploring the influences that build them and seeking to establish proximity between these representations and Currents of Environmental Education within Sauvé's proposal. The analyzes started from the students' responses obtained through a questionnaire divided into two sections; the first investigated the participants' profile with open and closed questions; the second used the Free Word Association technique, to identify the representations we used the evocations of the participants from the inducing term; Environmental education. The data obtained were tabulated and analyzed with the aid of OPENEVOC and WordArt software and Bardin's Content Analysis was also used. The results obtained were the identification of the Naturalist, Sustainability, Conservationist, Bioregional, Eco-education, Moral/Ethics and resolute Currents from the representations arising from thirteen Evocations (Awareness, Preservation, Environment, Sustainability, Care, Nature, Pollution, Teaching, Plants , Recycling, Ecosystem, Trees, Conservation and Countryside). The main influences in the construction of these representations are the experiences with environmental themes in different environments such as research and extension activities followed by academic training through mandatory disciplines. It was also possible to perceive that these representations influence the identity of the subjects as environmental educators, since most considered training in EE to be more important for Biology and Geography courses. The inclusion of environmental themes in the compulsory disciplines of the Biology Course rarely occurs. The Physics Course does not present any environmental theme in its matrices, in the Chemistry Course it occurs occasionally and the Geography Course is the one that has the highest frequency in the inclusion of environmental themes.