Six schools were visited, interviews were conducted during complementary activities (AC), with teachers from the various basic high school subjects (Graphic 1). Of these, the largest number was in the area of mathematics (26 teachers), probably because it is one of the subjects with the highest workload in high school.
The subjective question (first of the questionnaire) sought, in their answers, the teachers' perception regarding the concept of EE. These showed a tendency to EE in the words of Carlos Loureiro (2004), conservative and conservationist, in the way of thinking about the relationship between nature and society.
There is, in the concepts of EE, according to the teachers, an individualistic view that the social change will occur by the sum of the individual changes as recommended by the teacher 16:
“Need for knowledge of anthropic action in relation to the balance of ecosystems, their maintenance of their living and recyclable elements for the perpetuation of the species, life and the planet”.
Teacher 40 also defends:
“EE is to work on the knowledge of how to live in an environment without interfering or changing the environment”.
Most teachers affirm to adopt a critical line in their school routine when defending, for the most part, that knowledge should be correlated with the complexity of social and environmental issues, they need to seek the construction of a world in which we can live and that EE must form critical individuals. However, when analyzing the responses of teachers about what EE is, we observe the predominance of words such as conservation, sustainability, ecological awareness, as observed in the words of the teachers:
“EE consists above all in a way of life, which directs us to a vision of conservation and sustainability of the planet, therefore, they must be implanted, disseminated, in all environments, companies, institutions” (teacher 9).
“It is a way of making the population aware of alerting and silly relevant attitudes in the face of the degradation of the environment in which we live. In this context, we can at least alleviate the existing problems due to the preservation of the natural environment in which we are inserted” (teacher 17).
“For me EE is the attempt to live harmoniously or properly respecting, preserving and improving the environment in which one lives” (teacher 31).
“Awareness that everyone is responsible for taking actions to preserve waters, flora and fauna. Today environmental education is already being started in pre school” (teacher 36).
This consensus around the preservationist and naturalistic concept of EE tends to maintain the degrading and unsustainable model from a socio-environmental point of view, leading, in the words of Carlos Loureiro, Geisy Barbosa and Marina Zborowski (2009), to a partial understanding of the socio-environmental reality that points to a emptying of political debates aimed at overcoming the current socioeconomic and cultural formation and the displacement of practical directions for a strictly ethical and individual discussion.
A critical approach in EE requires a critique of reality. In the words of the teachers, we observed an absence of critical interpretation, especially in a city like Juazeiro, where socio-environmental problems are stark and urgent. Even the professors who defend a critical view of EE still demonstrate, in their concepts, that there is a lack of an individual and social perspective, historically situated. as noted in the responses below:
“It is the set of knowledge that establishes a relationship between environment and society, ranging from factors related to the conservation of the environment, to the sustainable use of resources and consumption practices to assist in the construction of critical knowledge” (teacher 15).
“It is an education process responsible for training critical citizens and committed to the preservation of the environment with natural resources and above all with sustainability” (teacher 34).
A transformative path must be taken, forming and building in the exercise of active citizenship, transforming the socio-environmental crisis in which we live. Pedagogical actions need to overcome the transmission of ecologically correct knowledge.
The awareness actions that prevail in the school routine need to be linked to the critical context, because, isolated, they will be insufficient to make the students capable of modifying their individual and collective practices. According to Guimarães (2004, p. 30):
“Pedagogical practices tend to reproduce the pedagogical practice of traditional Education, intoxicating the critical and creative perspective in the pedagogical process, producing, in the school reality, a Conservative Environmental Education.”
Brazilian education lacks a critical perspective, and this, of course, is reflected in EE. Although it is observed in the responses of the subjects of this research, to think towards critical action, the action is maintained in the encounter of the positivist view of science, resulting in alienating activities, exercising the educational action in an uncritical way.
“Thus, professionals exercise their functions uncritically, limiting themselves to passing on pre-established programs and content, without making a critical and transformative intervention. In this process, the educator “becomes a prisoner of instrumental and practical action”, not being able to see the limits of his action or the essence of his practice.” (Olinda Noronha 2010, p 13)
It is necessary to promote reflective practical teaching and training needs to foster a pedagogical proposal that allows educators to be researchers of their own practice. Training under the guidance of pragmatism is limited to fragmented and decontextualized knowledge (Elmo Lima 2015).
The modern environmental crisis requires a new way of understanding and building man's cultural systems, Edgar Gaudiano (2002) argues that the environmental crisis does not require only an act of repentance accompanied by a purpose of good conduct. In the speeches of the subjective responses of the teachers analyzed here, we find expressions such as "sensitization", "awareness".
“Awareness or better sensitization for environmental conservation (teacher 122)
“It is the awareness that the individual needs towards the environment seeking a better conservation and avoiding damages.” (teacher 120)
“Awareness of people regarding the preservation of the environment, allowing the evolution of human civilization in a clean, harmonious and self-sustainable way.” (teacher 66)
“It is the practice that contributes to the formation of environmentally conscious citizens.” (teacher119)
“It is any form of teaching that seeks to raise awareness and engage students in practices, aiming at collaborating for the environment in which they are inserted. This education is, therefore, firstly of awareness and later of actions.” (teacher 95)
Although these terms and concepts are familiar to us, the big problem is that they have not been satisfactorily defined and much less operationalized for the practical purposes of specific educational processes. Unfortunately, the fact that we are informed about a problem and become aware of it, is not an essential condition to participate in actions and activities to prevent that same problem (Gaudiano 2002).
EE is not just about the conservation or preservation of a specific area of nature, highlighted by the social and economic dimensions (Oliva 2002). As some teachers define in their answers to the first question of the questionnaire:
“It is an area of knowledge that aims to preserve the environment.” (Teacher 10)
“It is a set of goals that seek to provoke reflection in the individual, leading him to a change in attitudes aimed at the preservation of the environment, aiming at a better quality of life and conservation of the planet.” (Teacher 29)
“It is a process of training the individual who is concerned with environmental problems, aiming at the conservation and preservation of natural resources.” (Teacher 43).
“Preserve the nature...” (Teacher 107)
Jorge Maia (2015) argues that the teacher needs to become a professional capable of developing a socializing project in his pedagogical practice that recognizes his students and himself as a political subject. Gaudiano (2002, p. 109) corroborates this idea when he defends:
In other words, we need to develop an Environmental Education that promotes literacy strategies that enable people to understand the reasons for unemployment, violence, lack of hope, degradation of the environment, and link these reasons to the particular conditions of their quality of life, of his vital surroundings. Once these foundations are laid, people will be able to make their own decisions to intervene in areas that affect their lives and exercise their power.
In the second block of questions, teachers indicated, according to their perception, the most important social values to be worked on in EE: knowledge, conservation of the environment, quality of life, sustainability, respect for living beings and the environment and social justice. They marked from 1 to 6, in order of importance (1 being the most important and 6 being the least important). In the analysis of the data, the sum of each of the grades with a variation from 1 to 6 was considered, attributed by the teachers, with the grade 6 being assigned each time the value has been left blank (as it was not considered important). The final result was obtained from the average of the sum of the values divided by the number of teachers (n = 140). Graph 2 indicates that respect for living beings and the environment (2.75), was the attitude considered most important to be worked on in EE. Social justice (4.76) was considered the least important attitude to be developed in EE.
Carvalho (2012) points out that the main objective of critical EE is the formation of an ecological attitude guiding the decisions and the positioning of the subject in the world, through the adoption of a system of beliefs, values and ethical and aesthetic sensibilities according to the ideals of life of an ecological subject. Social justice is an essential principle for the achievement of a dignified life for all; this, pursued by the emancipatory EE. In view of this, Deborah Munhoz (2004, p. 144) announces:
Social ecology expands personal care for other people with whom we relate as well as for the entire human species. It is solidarity, dialogue, peaceful resolution of conflicts, sharing, respecting differences, dedication to causes linked to social justice and the achievement of a dignified life for all. (our translation).
The EE must seek a critical education focused on citizenship, which trains individuals capable of identifying and intervening in society-nature relations and in the disharmony that is created by socio-environmental conflicts (Carvalho 2012).
Valdo Barcelos (2012) corroborates this idea by stating that “The discontent and the passive non-acceptance of what is happening in the world is what can provoke our imaginative creation in the sense of building alternatives of thought as well as actions that, from the place, can intervene in the issues global ecological footprints ”.
It happens that we live in a society in which economic and social goods are objects of an unequal distribution, recalls Carvalho (2012), where groups with greater economic strength overlap their corporate interests over the collective interests in the distribution of environmental goods. The educational action, according to Loureiro (2004), must have a growing commitment to democracy, the exercise of citizenship and improvement of the quality of life, placed within parameters compatible with social justice, the equitable distribution of socially produced goods and with the consolidation of an “ethics of life” that respects cultural specificities and the identities of social groups.
The quality of life value, second to last in the evaluation of teachers, must be accessible to all. The educational action in critical and emancipatory AE must be committed to democracy and the exercise of citizenship, placing it within the parameters compatible with the quality of life. We highlight the concern with social values: environmental justice and quality of life, in the environmental struggle, when Carvalho (2012, p. 171) announces:
Environmental justice, in this case, means everyone's responsibility for the preservation of environmental assets and the guarantee of their collective character. This has been one of the new concepts used in the environmental struggle, showing the uneven distribution of access to environmental goods and their use and the precarious quality of life standards to which the poorest populations on the planet have been subjected. (our translation)
The scope of discussions on environmental issues must be beyond the conceptions of nature, rooted in EE's naturalistic, conservative and conservationist vision (Loureiro 2004). That said, the need for initial and continuing training is evident, based on the result we observed in Graph 3, in which 54% of teachers consider social justice to be a less important value in EE, and 29% consider respect for living beings and the environment is the most important value to be developed at EE.
According to Loureiro (2004), this is the result, in terms of environmental education, of a government action that stood out for the dissociation between the environmental and the political education, favoring the proliferation of naive and naturalistic discourses and the practice focused on raising awareness from the “human” to the “natural environment” - both disconnected from the debates about corporate models as a whole.
The teacher is responsible for carrying out environmental education and does so based on his knowledge, representations and intentions regarding education and environmental issues. The reflection and practice of environmental education are not the exclusive result of public policies. However, they establish guidelines and promote projects, programs, continuing teacher training, didactic material and other strategies, with greater or lesser systematization and success, to develop environmental education in educational institutions (Torales 2013).
Among the teachers surveyed, it was observed that, among those who have not yet taken postgraduate courses (2%), none considered social justice to be a relevant value in EE. As noted in Graph 4, this percentage increases gradually as the level of training of the teaching professional advances.
Adequate teacher education, according to Maia (2015), needs to train a professional in a position to develop a socializing project in his pedagogical practice, recognizing his students and himself as political subjects. It is necessary, therefore, still in the words of Maia (2015), to identify the assumptions that guide the training process, as well as the influences that teachers suffer. Torales (2013) states that:
The training of teachers, along with other elements that work in the school context, is part of the process of incorporating the theme in the curricular scope, since, without there being an understanding of environmental issues in their political, ideological, social and economic aspects, seeking the construction of values and attitudes, actions tend to become uncharacterized as alternatives for the renewal of pedagogical practice. (our translation).
The environmental theme, as a dimension of the educational-school process and understood as a socio-environmental problem, needs to be part of the daily practice of teachers. There is a need to analyze the pedagogical behavior of these professionals in different situations and contexts, especially in their action in the face of socio-environmental demands, in order to identify the factors that influence and / or determine their praxis (Torales 2013).
In the following graph (Graph 5), it demonstrates the ineffectiveness of the courses and workshops for training in EE, since the value considered essential to the assumptions of critical EE, social justice, was considered without, or with little importance, among teachers who participation or did not participate in training courses in EE.
Environmental education needs a debate with deep theoretical rigor that leads to reflection on fundamentals that guide educational actions. It is necessary to break with the discourse centered exclusively on the ecological perspective that preaches superficial changes (Maia 2015). This idea is confirmed by Torales (2013), when he announces that there is a crisis of teaching identities, which also manifests itself in professional contexts, in which the new demands, resulting from industrial and technological advances, demand an adaptation not only of the profile of the necessary professional, as well as the role to be played by it.
The third block of questions consists of four options, each option consists of two phrases, we asked the teachers to identify between the two available phrases of each option, the one that best suited the activities performed by him in EE. In the first option, 82% of teachers agreed with sentence 1, which says: “Knowledge must be correlated with the complexity of the social and environmental issues that surround and constitute it”, while only 12% agreed with the sentence that says that “The environment and nature, must be analyzed as a natural space as opposed to the human world”.
This result confirms the principles of Isabel Carvalho (2004), for whom an emancipatory EE must privilege the understanding of the human in interactions with nature, showing the horizons of historical and cultural meanings.
The second option deals with the need to learn to live together, to inhabit Terra Homeland as Edgar Morin calls it (1995) and to live together is a necessity our identity is planetary what will happen to us all will happen. The phrase “we need to seek the construction of a world in which we can not only live, but live together based on attitudes such as love, solidarity, cooperation and welcome” was chosen by 77% of the teachers; this idea, which embraces the principle that EA should contribute to a socially and ecologically fairer world.
Against this thought, the next sentence of the second option, which advocates that "environmental education should provide a theory in which the individual can submit to society, acceptance and learning of values" was chosen by only 18% of teachers. Children need to grow in the experience of values and not in their acceptance and learning, even because values are not taught (Barcelos 2012).
For Humberto Maturama and Garda Verden Zoller (2004), the concern about whether the child is learning something or not is totally unnecessary, as he is always learning, although not always what the teacher wants, nor at the pace he wants to impose. The child is expanding the conditions for reflection and performance. Barcelos (2012, p.32) argues that:
From the point of view of environmental education, one of the great contributions that we can cite is that one of the most important roles of the school is that it helps children to grow in the experience of values and not just in their acceptance and / or learning, especially because values are not taught. We have to live them and, preferably, in community. (our translation).
Carlos Loureiro, Philippe Layrargues and Ronaldo Castro (2009) point out that an environmental education proposal identified with the reformist bias will seek to promote the change in the subject's conduct, in his daily and individualized relationship with the environment and with natural resources. This is a principle that the EE must pursue, and the teaching activity must guide the subjects of learning along this path.
Wildson Santos and Eduardo Mortimer (2000) bet that it is enough to review the extent to which the great promises of modernity remain fulfilled or their fulfillment has resulted in perverse effects. For the subjects to be able to play the role of citizens with local and planetary awareness, EA needs to equip them to know and face reality objectively, establishing cause and effect relationships of the processes that originate environmental and social degradation.
This idea, advocated in the second sentence of the third option, says that EE activities must "know reality objectively, establish cause and effect relationships of the processes that originate environmental and social degradation in order to face them". It was selected by 33% of teachers. The first, still the third option, with the acceptance of 65% of teachers, states that activities in EE should “foster reflection on environmental relations, aiming at protecting impacts and providing conditions for decision-making that aims to achieve quality of life and environmental preservation ”.
In this sense, educators need to overcome the tendency to base EE with only ecological aspects. They need to know the reality, seeking to foster reflection on socioeconomic and environmental relations (Carvalho 2012).
Option 4 demonstrates that 86% of teachers agree that “EE must train critical, politically committed and action-oriented individuals”; while only 9% argue that: “EE should be concerned with raising awareness and interpreting reality”.
Here, the contradiction of the professors regarding the critical character of EA is evident, because at the same time that they have an “ecological” and purely naturalistic view of EA (as demonstrated in the third option), the majority agrees that EA must train critical individuals and action-oriented. Maia (2015) points out that it is necessary to situate our understanding in relation to these rationalities and present more significant alternatives from the point of view of critical and transformative environmental education.
It is necessary to take a more critical look at social reality. Barcelos (2012), demonstrates this concern when he states:
The work with environmental issues is requiring a great intellectual effort in order to represent some of our models of thinking and acting. These models have been shown to be insufficient to deal with contemporary ecological issues in their most diverse forms of presentation. On the other hand, environmental issues, in many cases, have presented themselves as new problems, until recently unknown to our studies and research. Therefore, there is nothing more sensible than adopting new ideas and alternatives when we face new problems. (our translation).
In view of this statement, the lack of continuing education in the surveyed population and, mainly, the conservative and conservationist view of EA by most of the teachers is striking. Carlos Marcelo (1997), discussing teacher training and knowledge about learning to teach, states that the research carried out shows that the knowledge of teachers in training is associated with practical situations, even though the relations between thought and practice are unclear and known. This idea is corroborated by Donald Schon (1983, p. 26), when he distinguishes between knowledge-in-action and reflection-in-action.
Knowledge-in-action is a type of knowledge that people have linked to action, and it is knowledge about how to do things. It is a dynamic and spontaneous knowledge that is revealed through our performance, but that we have a special difficulty in making verbally explicit. Unlike knowledge-in-action, reflection-in-action assumes a conscious cognitive activity of the subject, which is carried out while acting (Schon 1983). (our translation).
As for the transversality proposed by the PCNs (Brasil 1997), in which environmental education should be inserted, the aim is to encourage reflections on socioeconomic relations in this context, highlighting “the complexity of environmental problems and, consequently, the need to develop the critical sense and the attitudes necessary to resolve them”.
These attitudes occur as the didactic-pedagogical work is able to sensitize the learning subjects, pursuing, as stated by Dermeval Saviani (2013), the sequential and gradual organization of the objective knowledge available in a determined historical stage, for the purpose of its transmission-assimilation to the throughout the schooling process. The author also points out that this is known as “school knowledge”.
Danielle Grynspan (2014) argues that the greatest challenge from the CTSA perspective is to sensitize individuals, from the socioenvironmental scenario, to the deficiency between the link of scientific-technological development and the living conditions of the populations, denaturalizing the problems that result from the lack of this perception. José Quintas (2009, p. 62) reinforces this idea when he announces:
Thus, any environmental problem to be understood must be studied as a product of the interpretation of social, economic, political, cultural, ethical, historical and biological factors. For all these reasons, it is said that the environmental issue is complex, and the exercise of knowing it requires complex thinking. (our translation).
The role of teachers, seen as mediators of the educational process, is the planning of activities that arouse the students' curiosity, their creativity, in order to stimulate the preposition of original and possible solutions to be carried out. The bet is that only specific practices do not present effective continuities of formal Environmental Education and, even considering their importance, they do not imply in the “Sensitization” process.
The sentences in the fourth block of questions refer to the transversal character of the EE, and its applicability was measured or not by the teachers, based on the Likert scale. The values that come closest to the number five refer to an agreement on the part of the teachers, and the values that come close to the number 1 show disagreement (Graph 6).
According to the results shown in graph 6, referring to sentence 1, of the fourth block of questions, the respondents agree, almost unanimously (98.7%), that within the contents and themes worked on in the discipline, it is possible to develop proposals for works that include Environmental Education. Most of them disagree (Graph 7) regarding the second sentence, which states that the insertion of EE in everyday pedagogical work interferes with the fulfillment of planned tasks.
When, in sentence 3, it is questioned about the development of activities related to EE, we observed that the majority of teachers (46.4%) affirm to develop EE activity in school units (Graph 8). However, 38.6% of teachers do not agree with this statement, indicating that they do not carry out EE activities in all units.
The transversality aspect will always be a challenge, since this school practice to be inserted in the curriculum in an interdisciplinary and contextualized way involves the training and willingness of teachers to develop it. This, especially when conditions must be offered so that universal knowledge (school knowledge) linked to science and technology can be appropriated (Grynspan 2014).
This author also stresses that society and the environment, in the CTSA bias, must constitute scenarios for significant and addressed socio-environmental problems, with the support of scientific and technological knowledge, taking into account, also, cultural knowledge reaching the dimension social and affective. These, based on the argument of reality, thus identifying themselves with Freire's theoretical-conceptual points of view (Grynspan 2014).
A considerable percentage of teachers (62.1%) disagree with sentence 4, which questions whether the teacher prioritizes talking about environmental issues on commemorative dates related to the theme (Graph 9).
On the contrary, almost unanimously (97.2%), in sentence 5, claim to contribute within their classes with aspects related to EE (Graph 10), including, in sentence 6, 87.2% affirm that they address scientific and physical aspects of the natural environment and its consequent changes, (Graph 11), thus contributing to EE in its teaching activities.
According to Marilia Tozoni-Reis (2001), the reduction of educational practice to the transmission of technical-scientific knowledge contributes to limit the possibility of teachers acting as mediators of social practice, built and built by humanity. The focus on contextual situations, as indicated by Denise Freitas et al. (2006), contributes to the promotion of cognitive and emotional development, since social authors are involved in the analysis and discussion of problems that contemplate CTSA relationships, contributing to overcoming cognitive, sociocultural and affective obstacles related to understanding and understanding possibility of action.
As a consequence of engagement, Grynspan (2014) points out that changes occur in the living context, launching possible solutions for breaking through entrenched accommodation postures, in which students narrow the student-community relationship through an interdisciplinary exploration, presenting remarkable results in terms of environmental literacy related to scientific literacy with a humanist bias.
One of the objectives of this research was to characterize the professional profile of teachers from the state network in Juazeiro (fifth block of questions). The first finding in the results of the questionnaire was that 100% of respondents have a degree course. As for sex, the predominance of respondents (61%) is female, and the majority of the population interviewed (44%) is between 41 and 50 years old.
We observed that 82% of teachers have more than 10 years of teaching experience, with 58 teachers interviewed (41%) having between 10 and 20 years of teaching experience, and 57 teachers (approximately 41%) having between 21 and 30 years of activity teacher. When asked about participation in courses and / or workshops in the environmental area in recent years, 69% of teachers said they had not participated. As for professional development courses, important in continuing education, a considerable number of professors (67%) have a Postgraduate course lato sensu, with a reduced number of Postgraduate courses stricto sensu (master's and doctorate), due to the great difficulty encountered by professors from this state to take a master's (17%) and doctorate (2%) course.
Although the LDB, in its article 67, item II, determines that the education professional must have periodic and remunerated licensing for continuous professional improvement, in the decree nº 16.417 of November 16, 2015, the Government of the State of Bahia, in its article 7, item IX, suspends the granting of leave of absence from public servants to carry out improvement courses or others that require replacement.
It is necessary to consider that the teacher needs to appropriate knowledge to go beyond ideas and words. Continuing education should start from the sectors that support it, understanding that, in order to enable student education, continuing teacher education is necessary in order to break the theoretical-methodological paradigms. Maria Isabel Cunha (2009, p. 84) corroborates this thought when he states:
We affirm that we need to assume that teaching is a complex activity, which requires both careful preparation and singular conditions of exercise, which can distinguish it from some other professions. In other words, being a teacher is not a task for neophytes, because the multiplicity of knowledge and knowledge, which are at stake in their training, requires a dimension of totality, which distances itself from the logic of specialties, so dear to many other professions, in the organization taylorist in the world of work. In them, more and more is known less and less. (our translation).
Even so, in the words of Gauthier Clemont, Isauro Nuñez and Betânia Ramalho (2000), we must consider that professionalizing teaching is a challenge in which the result is not guaranteed. It depends heavily on various elements, especially in the context of professional work and not only on the type of training provided to teachers. Continuing education, however, insist Clemont, Nuñez and Ramalho (2000), mobilize diverse knowledge of teachers, coming from different areas of study in the training process. Therefore, not only postgraduate courses, but also courses and workshops in EE become relevant. These still have low participation of the population studied in this research.
There are values and attitudes that can be built from the pedagogical and socio-historical process, enabling the formation of citizens who will follow the quality indicators of their future. Thus, pedagogical work must consider values that pursue solidarity sensitivity, capable of guiding environmental citizens to problematize and act on socioenvironmental issues (Carvalho 2012).
According to Moacir Gadotti (2000), EE should not be limited to the external environment without confronting social values. Also according to PNEA, in EE, the individual and the community must build social values, knowledge, skills, attitudes and competences aimed at the conservation of the environment. These values must be present at all levels and modalities of the educational process in the expectation of the formation of citizenship in a collective collective movement in the construction of an environmentally sustainable society (Brasil 1999).
Continuing education should enable educators to more easily recognize how the cultural meanings of the environment are transmitted and constructed (Barcelos 2012). This same author also advocates that discontent and passive non-acceptance of what is happening in the world is what can provoke our imaginative creation in the sense of building alternatives of thought as well as actions that, from the place, can interfere in ecological issues global.
EA has a relevant role as an interdisciplinary and transversal theme, permeating the curriculum. The formation of interdisciplinary teams can have substantial benefits for learning and can also produce a positive school climate, greater job satisfaction among teachers and higher performance scores than non-interdisciplinary schools (Nancy Flowers et al. 1999).