A (con)formação da Educação Ambiental ingênua em livros didáticos: despolitização na área de Ciências da Natureza e suas tecnologias no ensino médio da rede pública de educação sergipana

Abstract

Environmental Education is essential to the formation of ecopolitical subjects, as it raises awareness of their role in transforming society toward the ideals of environmental justice. From this perspective, the present study sought to understand how textbooks—Teacher’s Manuals— approved under the National Textbook and Teaching Material Program (PNLD) 2021, whose implementation took place in 2024, and adopted by the municipal and state public education systems of Sergipe, address socio-environmental issues within the field of Natural Sciences and Their Technologies in upper secondary education. To achieve this objective, the research was grounded in the Critical Environmental Education approach, adopting qualitative methodological procedures, with documentary analysis conducted in light of Discursive Textual Analysis. The analytical corpus consisted of six volumes of textbooks—Teacher’s Manuals—selected based on the following inclusion/exclusion criteria: being used in public schools in Sergipe in 2024; being aimed at upper secondary education; and belonging to the field of Natural Sciences and Their Technologies. Accordingly, the following thematic axes were defined for analysis: (a) Educational Policy; (b) Environmental Injustice; and (c) Formation of Ecopolitical Subjects. In this context, our results reveal that the analyzed materials present a fragmented, naïve, and conformist approach to Environmental Education, marked by hollow, technicist discourses aligned with the logic of the neoliberal project currently shaping Brazilian education. We also identified a reduction of the understanding of citizenship to the development of technical competencies oriented toward the labor market, to the detriment of critical reflection on the socio-environmental crisis. Furthermore, we found limitations in the units of meaning regarding the implementation of interdisciplinarity, sustainability, ecopolitical formation, and the debate on environmental injustice. Although national regulations—such as the Federal Constitution, the National Education Guidelines and Framework Law (LDB), the National Environmental Education Policy, the National Curricular Guidelines for Environmental Education, and the PNLD itself—indicate the need to address Environmental Education from a critical perspective, the contents of the analyzed works tend to reinforce the status quo, reproducing myths of Environmental Education, naturalized discourses, and obscuring the structural causes of the crisis. Finally, the analyzed textbooks are embedded in an educational project aimed at the conformity and depoliticization of Environmental Education, thereby contributing to the reproduction of socio-environmental inequalities. By highlighting these limitations, this study seeks to contribute to the academic and political debate on Environmental Education, underscoring the urgency of revising the PNLD’s selection and evaluation policies. We further emphasize the need to strengthen teacher protagonism, critical education, and interdisciplinarity as essential conditions for consolidating an Environmental Education committed to confronting socio-environmental issues and Environmental Injustice in Sergipe, within the field of Natural Sciences and Their Technologies.