"Ei, vamos na Bica dos Pintos?": a Educação Ambiental no Parque Natural Aloízio Fontes dos Santos a partir da prática docente desenvolvida no ensino fundamental

Abstract

Environmental education, in dialogue with schools and the local community, contributestothe process of shaping individuals. Teachers therefore play a key role in developingcritical,reflective, and emancipatory teaching practices focused on the socio-environmental context oftheir students. Despite this, studies indicate that local socio-environmental issues areoftenforgotten in everyday school life or addressed in a naive and generalist manner, withoutstimulating changes in the students' reality. Based on this premise, the present studyinvestigated the following research problem: how is Environmental Education developedinteaching practices carried out in schools located around the Aloízio Fontes dos Santos NaturalPark, known as Bica dos Pintos, in São Cristóvão-SE? Based on this problem, thegeneralobjective was defined as: to understand how Environmental Education is developedinteaching practices carried out in schools located around the Aloízio Fontes dos Santos NaturalPark. This study was developed as exploratory and explanatory qualitative research. Thedataproduction went through four stages: 1) Review of specialized literature; 2) Studyofdocuments guiding teaching practice; 3) Application of a questionnaire and semi-structuredinterviews with teachers from three schools that comprised the research locus; and4) analysisand interpretation of data using Discursive Textual Analysis (DTA). The results indicatethat,in the documents analyzed, Environmental Education is presented in a reduced formandthethemes that comprise it are addressed without criticality. The data obtainedthroughquestionnaires and interviews with teachers reveal that few of them carry out practicesinthepark and, when they do, these occur in an expository, demonstrative manner andwithoutreflection on the present reality. This situation stems mainly from two factors: thelackofbelonging and/or knowledge of teachers in relation to the region where the school is locatedand the lack of guidelines and space for Environmental Education in the guiding documents.Therefore, it is necessary to make Environmental Education visible in these documents, aswell as to promote a teaching approach focused on the students' territory, so that critical andactive subjects can be formed in the socio-environmental reality.