Educação ambiental na prática docente de professores da área de biologia durante o ciclo básico de formação do engenheiro agrônomo

Abstract

This research aimed to understand how Environmental Education (EA) has been experienced in the teaching practice of teachers in the field of Biology, during the basic cycle of the initial formation of the Agronomist, analyzing its repercussions on the disciplines at the end of the professional cycle, in addition to expectations of newly admitted students and their conceptions about EA at the beginning, half and end of the Agronomy Course at a public university in the federal education system in Brazil. The analysis of the state of the art indicated that it is a topic that has not been explored yet. This qualitative study was supported by the Content Analysis, proposed by Laurence Bardin, involving 869 registration units obtained from 111 questionnaires applied to students, 14 hours of interviews with teachers, 114 hours of participant observation in classes and documentary research. Having as a central inspiration the concept of EA proposed by Reigota, which should be understood as political education, in the sense that it claims and prepares citizens to demand social justice, national and planetary citizenship, self-management and ethics in social relations and with nature, this study brought reflections on EA in science teaching, as to how it has been introduced and articulated in teaching practice and the curricular structure of undergraduate courses, where biology constitutes an important basis for the training provided.The results obtained reinforced the prevalence of the fragmented, technicist perspective and lacking in a complex vision pointed out by the authors who analyzed agronomy courses from other universities in the country and which already motivated, in some of them, institutional processes of reformulation of the offered courses. The research identified that the few teaching practices with EA in the components of the Biology area of the basic cycle of education were limited to the conservative field, devoid of critical perspective and socio-political reflection. In addition, problems of articulation between teachers and between them and the Course Coordination seemed to hinder the solution of the identified problems, where the reformulation of the Course that has been going on for some years was unknown to most of the teachers interviewed and was not mentioned by any of the students, responses to applied questionnaires, not even in the observed classes. The study also identified that the academic training provided did not seem to increase the expectations of most students who, although it was very positive when they entered, were becoming disillusioned and abandoning the course that has a significant dropout rate. It is expected that the elements brought in this study will contribute to the reflections and strengthening of the dialogue processes within universities and between them and society, with the active participation of students, teachers and managers, supported in the understanding of EA as an instrument of social transformation, considered the historical perspective, criticality, freedom and awareness, central to Freire's knowledge.