Interfaces entre Educação Museal e Educação Ambiental: percepções dos visitantes do Museu de Ciências Naturais da Universidade Estadual de Ponta Grossa

Abstract

Research in Museum Education acts as an indicator of the relationship between the public and museum institutions; it helps to create references for training processes and provides support for the development of educational programs, projects and actions. In addition, it allows museums to reflect on the fulfillment of their institutional and educational mission, as well as to restructure and adjust their practices. Considering that the Museum of Natural Sciences (MCN) of the State University of Ponta Grossa aims to contribute to the rescue of scientific culture and awareness about the environment, having as an articulator the education about natural processes, this research sought to analyze the environmental educational dimension of the museum. We also sought to understand the concepts and practices of Museum Education and Environmental Education; to investigate, based on visiting experiences, the perception of the spontaneous public and the public of basic education teachers about the environmental educational dimension of the MCN; and to provide subsidies that can guide the museum's educational actions. Two questionnaires with different question scripts, open and closed, were applied to the two groups of visitors. The questionnaires were applied in person at the MCN to a group of spontaneous visitors and online to a group of teachers, from August 2023 to May 2024, with a total of 43 participants. Environmental Education is a multidimensional and

complex field that brings together contributions from different areas of knowledge and political- pedagogical matrices, has multiple social actors and can be implemented in different contexts.

In this sense, the results revealed a potential impact of the MCN visitation experience on visitors’ environmental education, with characteristics that indicated a relationship with two political-pedagogical macro trends in EA: conservationist and pragmatic. It can be said that the MCN has become a space for new learning and reflections on issues related to nature and its protection. The analysis of the interface between museum education and environmental education allowed us to identify gaps and deepen our understanding of the environmental education role of science museums in the current context of socio-environmental crisis and climate change. The need to integrate geological and biological knowledge with social and historical knowledge into MCN educational activities was also considered, as well as to carry out critical training processes for museum educators. The practical implications of this research provide support for the creation of such actions, together with self-evaluation and reflection on the educational actions already carried out by the museum, aiming at their strengthening and improvement within the community.