Educação Ambiental: concepções sobre meio ambiente entre alunos do Curso de Formação de Docentes em Ponta Grossa, PR

Abstract

We are experiencing Late Modernity, in which the influences of globalization, individualization, and reflexivity predominate. Inserted in this context, the production of knowledge occurs through interaction between individuals capable of formulating and reformulating concepts through language and discourse. Faced with this reality, different discussions about the society-nature relationship and environmental issues emerge in society. This research analyzed how students in a Technical Teacher Training course constructed the concept of environmental preservation, within the analysis categories of Geography. The working hypothesis is that there was a conceptual corpus drawn from a cultural identity among future teachers and that this corpus could be detected and characterized through the application of social research techniques. The methodological steps covered a theoretical-conceptual survey, motivational exploratory activity, participant observation in a natural area, the cognitive activity of theme association, and a focus group. Through the analysis of the Collective Subject Discourse on the students' speech and writing, the results showed that the participants attribute to the environment, mainly, the meanings of beauty and availability of resources. In this way, concepts fell within the scope of Conservationist Environmental Education. Seeking to understand how the topic is dealt with in educational institutions, the Pedagogical Projects of the undergraduate courses at the public Universities of Ponta Grossa were analyzed, as well as the Pedagogical Political Project of the Teacher Training Course at the educational institution of the research participants, finding most of them have a strong theoretical basis, including subjects directly related to Environmental Education. It is known that Environmental Education is not directly related to educational institutions, but it can be an important tool within schools and universities in the construction of knowledge linked to the environment. A weakness was observed in the methodological approaches, which did not, for the most part, achieve in-depth reflections capable of contributing to Critical Environmental Education, capable of correlating the environment with the social, economic, cultural, and political spheres. There is a need for a light teaching practice to conduct critically guided discussions about the environment, aimed at professional training focused on sustainability.