A dimensão ambiental na rede de Ensino fundamental no município de Maceió-AL: uma análise da prática da educação ambiental

Abstract

The environmental dimension of formal education has caused some confusion in important sectors of the pedagogical community. Environmental education, in many cases, is reduced to just one more theme among the so-called cross themes in the community without taking into account the intertwining relations among the several themes that make up the social environment in which we live. These approaches may mislead the pedagogical practice and reduce environmental education to a ready-made recipe. The main purpose of this dissertation is to analyze how environmental education is carried out in municipal fundamental schools in Maceió-AL. The specific purposes are: 1. characterize the research subjects; 2. Describe the kinds of experience in environmental education and the main themes developed by the schools; 3. Identify if there is any kind of evaluation of the results before and/or after the environmental education experience. In order to characterize the research subjects and the kinds of experience in environmental education that are being developed by teachers of the first grades, I carried out a quantitative/qualitative research, consisting at first of questionnaires administered in the 18 selected schools of the municipal fundamental school system, according to the education census carried out by the Department of Education of the state of Alagoas in 2006. On a next moment, the questionnaires were answered by the teachers themselves, and I could also deepen my investigation through non-structured interviews, informal conversations and spontaneous reports. I hope this research can be a useful contribution to the development of a more critical pedagogical practice, and to the construction of a school system committed to the gradual collective building of practices and knowledge that enable environment preservation.