Percursos da educação ambiental nos processos de produção do currículo nos microcontextos da escola

Abstract

The aim of this research was to understand aspects and ways of insertion of environmental education (EE) in political microprocess of curriculum production in school. In order to achieve this aim, it was used theoretical and methodological frameworks of the critical aspect of EE and an approach to the educational policy production cycle elaborated by the English sociologist Stephen Ball and his collaborators. In particular, this last reference allowed us to understand processes of curriculum policy production in different articulated contexts, with special emphasis on the context of practice, which meas, on the context of curriculum realization within school institutions. This study states the importance of a curriculum policy framework for understanding environmental education in the school context. The school is the “context of practice” of the curriculum policy production cycle. For this reason it recreates, makes sense the contexts of curriculum production - on this scale called “microcontext of influence, text production and pedagogical achievement”. These contexts work without spatial and temporal boundaries. They also work interdependently during curriculum design and execution processes. As a consequence, EE would be the result of relationships and clashes in these microcontext and its understanding depends on an approach based on the school context. The research was carried out in two elementary schools located in two cities of Pernambuco. The data were constituted in 2018 and 2019. The research procedures were: participant observation and field notebook. In addition, semi-structured interviews recorded in audio and video were transcribed. The analysis showed that there is no curriculum in the schools surveyed for environmental education, premises or contents that constitute it. There is indeed a “curriculum that inserts EE” according to regular school practices and demands, sometimes adding new themes or simply giving new meanings to disciplinary content. The ways in which EE can be inserted in these institutions have taken into account the collective elaboration and execution of interdisciplinary pedagogical projects oriented by a central theme that generally covers environmental and other thematic issues. The definitions of EE took place in at least three microcontexts of curriculum production at school: influence microcontext - in discussions and deliberations about what should be taught -, text production - in the processes of elaboration of pedagogical projects - and the practice - in the implementation of pedagogical-environmental actions. The researched schools show the predominance of environmental discourses associated with the critical aspect of EE. This predominance guides the actions of school actors in the microcontext of text influence and production. This discourse have also become hegemonized in the midst of debates, permeated by statements and alliances between people who relate ideas and interests. Nevertheless, in the practice context, it means, pedagogical realization, hybrid environmental discourses were evidenced, which combine characteristics of conservationist, pragmatic and critical aspects of EE.