REPRESENTAÇÕES SOCIAIS SOBRE OS PROBLEMAS E TRANSFORMAÇÕES SOCIOAMBIENTAIS: UM ESTUDO TRANSVERSAL ENTRE GERAÇÕES E GÊNEROS

Abstract

The following is a research on environmental education that discusses the social representations of the socioenvironmental problems and transformations between generations and genders. It’s grounded on the theoretical fields of Psychology – Environmental, Genetic, and Social – and Sociology, which serve as a basis for Social Representations and critical Environmental Education. Its general objective is to understand the representations regarding the socioenvironmental problems and transformations still existing between generations, encompassing the influence of the gender in the constitution of an object for the environmental education, which contemplates the relations between the local and global. The research is configured as a cross-sectional study, having involved three generations of both genders: sixth grade Middle School students, third grade High School students, and elderly citizens. The study encompassed approximately 857 different subjects, investigated from 2013 to 2015. This is, however, a research with different forms of methodology, using varied instruments for collecting data (questionnaires, focus groups, and narrative interviews) and analyzing content, which was accomplished with help from software such as EVOC, SIMI, SPSS, and ALCESTE, in order to cross data on education and gender. Among the results, it’s possible to highlight that the representations of the subjects are anchored to pragmatic and conservationist macrotrends in environmental education, both coming from traditional education, which values the environment over the individual. Among the students, it’s possible to highlight the socioenvironmental problems, considering that the environmental dimension is a characteristic of Middle School students, while the socioenvironmental dimension is more present in representations from High School students, coming from an idealistic perspective. The experiences of the students constitute the starting point for the discussions regarding their area, revealing the distance from their own environment. With elderly citizens, the relation of the environmental spheres appeared in a more striking way, putting men and women in distinct positions. Men analyze from the mesoenvironment to the macroenvironment, regarding transformations of nature and the physical habitat, while women make their analysis from the microenvironment to the mesoenvironment, characterized by the social dimension.