Educação ambiental crítica e a formação inicial de professores de ciências biológicas

Abstract

This research aimed at discussing the inclusion of Environmental Education (EE) in initial teacher training. From this perspective, our objective is to investigate the critical environmental education understandings of initial training teachers in Biological Sciences in Action-Research-Training in Science Teaching (IFAEC) process and the influence of these understandings on the teacher's constitution. We started from the following problematization: which information is presented about critical EE in the initial training of biological sciences teachers? To understand the objective and work on the perspectives of the proposed problem, we developed the research in two stages. The first stage is a state of knowledge, which the corpus of analysis was developed of 12 Brazilian theses and 18 dissertations focusing on EE in the initial training of science teachers, selected from the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (BDTD). This develops the first article of the dissertation. The second stage is related to the empirical research, accomplished with the participation of 15 teachers in initial training in biological science, during 18 formative meetings in the Curricular Component (CCR) of Teaching Practice: environmental education, which were planned according to the assumptions of the IFAEC. During the meetings, we used an initial questionnaire, reflective writings contained in the Webfolios - a virtual diary built using the Google Sites tool - and the development of a focal group with 10 Biological Sciences undergraduates enrolled in the CCR, which was audio recorded and transcribed for analysis. From this second stage of the research emerged the second, third and fourth articles that developed this dissertation. The data from the literature review, the initial questionnaire, the training diaries and the transcript of the audio recordings of the focal group were submitted to Textual Discourse Analysis (TDA) using the ATLAS. ti software. We can identify that environmental education is the foundation for the formation of an environmentally sustainable society, but in order to be able to work with it in a critical way, teachers need to have the right training. As a result, we emphasize the importance of curricular environmentalisation, which allows environmental education to be included at different levels of education, being addressed by different areas of knowledge. Therefore, by including the environmental dimension in the curriculums of initial teacher training courses, it is possible for the future teacher to develop knowledge, going through many stages until the graduation, just like a seed, which needs to germinate in order to develop. This development process does not take place in a linear way, but as a continuous cycle that interacts among theory, practice and reflection. Therefore, IFAEC presents itself as a potential teaching model, because it provides a reflective and contextualized approach, instigating teachers to investigate emerging contemporary themes that are related to the students' daily lives, making it possible to plan and develop pedagogical practices that promote scientific literacy and students' criticality, in this way, discussing the demands of environmental education. Therefore, teachers who are trained with a focus on environmental education have the potential to develop a critical approach capable of raising awareness among future generations, thus promoting sustainable development.