“Quando eu era pequenininha eu não sabia nada, nem andar, nem falar. Agora que tô mais grandinha, já aprendi muitas coisas, na minha casa e aqui na escola” – educação ambiental crítica na educação infantil

Abstract

Socio-environmental scenarios in Brazil and around the world reveal profound and extensive damage caused to nature, stemming from a model of political and economic development that is organized and maintained based on the logic of human exploitation and the infinite exploitation of natural resources, with the sole objective of accumulating material wealth concentrated in the hands of very few people on the planet, imposing several challenges on society. Among these is included the theoretical-practical tasks that the Early Childhood Education School - EEI - must carry out: knowing that children have been potential victims, on a global scale, of the harmful effects of nature’s destruction, it becomes urgent that socioenvironmental themes permeate pedagogical practices and be incorporated into the school curriculum and the EEI’s Political-Pedagogical Project. Brazil has already created a set of laws and regulations establishing Environmental Education - EE - as a mandatory area of study in basic education. In this sense, it is urgent that there is a convergence between EEI and EE to guarantee children’s right to access and participate in planned activities that put them in connection with nature. It is believed that Critical Environmental Education - CEE -, as an area of knowledge from an interdisciplinary perspective, can foster pedagogical practices that will positively impact children’s learning and development in EEI. This premise guides the present work, which aligns with Sustainable Development Goal - SDG - 4, and resulted from an empirical qualitative research that adopted methodological procedures of intervention research. The theoretical framework was based on: critical theories of education, studies on EE and childhood, and historical-cultural theory, in addition to critical analysis of documents and laws. The general objective was defined as: to develop, implement, and analyze practices in critical environmental education in early childhood education, aiming to understand the contributions of CEE to the integral development of children in a specific educational context. The sample consisted of 11 four-year-old children enrolled and regularly attending a Municipal Public Early Childhood Education School in the city of Aracaju-SE. Data generation occurred through the following methodological procedures/instruments: free and participant observation, field diary records, focus group, videos, and photographs. Four (04) practices in CEE were carried out. The research findings indicated that CEE practices in early childhood education promoted the study of themes and collective activities that mobilized children’s interest, affections, joys, and effective participation, from both individual and collective perspectives, resulting in learning, autonomy, development, and sensitivity towards nature. The group demonstrated vocabulary and speech expansion, as well as changes in attitude regarding care for plants and public spaces, such as the square; they learned to identify seeds, to engage in planting, learned about germination, and also about the reuse of packaging to build toys and plant seeds or seedlings. The educational product in which the practices were systematized was named: Nature Notebook – Practices in Critical Environmental Education in Early Childhood Education. It is hoped that it will be used as a pedagogical tool by teachers, to recreate practices that prioritize CEE as a pedagogical intervention strategy, aiming at the generation of learning, autonomy, and development of children through experiences with elements of nature in the Early Childhood Education School.