Formação continuada em Educação Ambiental: contribuições para a mobilização e participação social no enfrentamento das problemáticas socioambientais

Abstract

In times of multiple crises experienced on the planet, the socioenvironmental crisis stands out because it generates impacts on society and on the environment. One of the ways to face these crises would be the social involvement and participation in decision making. Environmental Education (EE) is a field of knowledge that can help in this movement, awakening the critical sense, enabling reflection on the current model of society and the different problems arising from it, and stimulating a look and act in relation to citizenship. In this sense, actions with the school community become fundamental for a real social transformation to occur. The continuing education of teachers, in light of a critical perspective of EE, is essential to problematize the reality and bring to light socioenvironmental issues. Therefore, the objective of this research was to understand how a continuing education course in EE, with an emphasis on social engagement and participation, can contribute to the confrontation of social and environmental issues. The research was characterized as research-intervention, which aims to create spaces for collective problematization and training practices that enable a new way of thinking and doing education. Thus, the intervention took place in a continuing education course for 21 teachers from the municipality of Turvo (PR), during the months of April and May 2022. This course promoted reflections about the local socioenvironmental problems, seeking measures to confront them through a local intervention proposal, and fostering reflections about citizen participation in society. The instruments for data production were two questionnaires applied to the teachers participating in the research and the field diary. Those informations were analyzed by means of qualitative analysis. From the questionnaires and the application of the course, we realized that most teachers were unclear about the concepts of citizenship, public policies, socioenvironmental issues, EE and the environment. We also identified that the teachers were concerned about the issues and demonstrated, through the intervention proposals, versatility and adaptability to face them in the classroom. The results indicated that the feeling of belonging and the creation of identity are essential for the incorporation of the socioenvironmental theme in schools, and that teachers, when working with students, can contribute to a more engaged society, aware of the socioenvironmental issues that permeate them.