As representações sociais do bioma cerrado entre os alunos do Curso de Tecnologia em Gestão Ambiental do Instituto Federal Goiano – Campus Urutaí

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the social representations of students from the Tecnologia em Gestão Ambiental do Instituto Federal Goiano – Campus Urutaí, on concepts related to the Cerrado and what is its importance to the environment in general and contrast the speech of these representations with scientific knowledge, considering that this biome has become the main alternative for expanding agriculture and cattle raising frontier in Brasil, because it has a mainly flat with ease to the possibility of mechanization and irrigation water availability in the region. The research is a qualitative approach, where we designed a semistructured questionnaire with questions related to the Cerrado and their forms of preservation. The methodology is based on analysis of the collective subject discourse (DSC) according to Moscovici's theory of social representations. The target audience were nineteen students from the sixth grade of the second half of 2010 and twenty-two students from the first grade of the first half of 2011, of the Course Tecnologia em Gestão Ambiental of the Instituto Federal Goiano – Campus Urutaí, to make a comparison of students when they start the course and when they finish, watching if the students in the DSC of the sixth period, there have been advances in scientific knowledge regarding the Cerrado, when compared with the DSC students of the first period. Participation in the survey was voluntary, and participants had to submit a term of informed consent, because it is a study in humans, according to the National Council of Ethics. The results found that the DSCs was both the first and sixth periods are very similar, and the cerrado objectification appears with the presentation of the State of Goiás, suggest agriculture and cattle raising as the best option for investment in productive arrangements for the cerrado, and still, emphasize the richness of biodiversity in the Cerrado. But the responses of students in the sixth period had more coherent texts in relation to scientific knowledge, proving that there was increase in knowledge, some even suggesting alternatives to mitigate the conflict between agriculture and cattle raising production and environmental conservation