Temas geradores no ensino de ciências como promotores da educação ambiental crítico-humanizadora na educação de jovens e adultos

Abstract

Science teaching has been presented as a fertile field for promoting debates on environmental issues and should be concerned with establishing relationships between the knowledge discussed and constructed with the impacts reflected on society. In this context, science teaching and Environmental Education (EA) emerge as tools for coping with socio-environmental problems, collaborating so that individuals can build values, knowledge and skills that aim to promote changes in reality, based on actions that lead to the environmental conservation and sustainability. The importance of bringing EE reflections to the school becomes even more relevant when the public is made up of people who had to drop out of regular education to work. Generally, they are people who belong to social classes in a situation of socio-environmental vulnerability, which highlights social exclusion, as is the case of most students of the Youth and Adult Education (EJA) modality. Bearing in mind that there is a relationship between what science teaching and critical-humanizing EE seek to promote, as well as the training needs of students who are in EJA, we ask ourselves: How can environmental issues be “generative themes” for the Teaching Science, in order to promote a critical-humanizing Environmental Education in Youth and Adult Education? We answered that question using descriptive qualitative research, inspired by Freire's pedagogy. We have two science teachers from Elementary School of EJA (EFEJA), from a State Network school located in the City of São Lourenço da Mata - Pernambuco (PE). Semi-structured interviews and observation were the methodological instruments mobilized for data collection. Seeking to collaborate positively with the educational practices for the EJA public, we developed formative moments, so that the teachers could experience the work of environmental themes as generating themes. For the treatment and analysis of the data, we are guided by the content analysis of Bardin (2011). The results showed that there are many difficulties, pressures and challenges that arise in the teacher's journey. Challenges that lead to discouragement, dehumanization and the reproduction of naive environmental practices. Despite this, we found a change of perspective about the critical-humanizing dimension of EE. In addition, we were able to identify that the EJA public, despite suffering from various social injustices, seeks in education the subsidies to carry out transformations in their reality. Thus, it was evident that critical-humanizing Environmental Education collaborates for the formation of these individuals who took a critical position when reading their reality, giving more meaning to the contents seen in the classroom.