Educação ambiental e a troca de saberes

Abstract

This research aimed to analyze the learning process from the environmental pedagogical praxis perspective taking into account the exchange of knowledge that occurred between 55 students from the 6th and the 7th grade of a public school located in Duque de Caxias/RJ. To understand the process of formation and development of a critical environmental education we took as a starting point the students’ reality throughout the year of 2015.Based on the concept of the Theory of Meaningful Learning from David Ausubel (1980), firstly, a kind of poll was given to the students. The intention was getting the level of knowledge they had about the environment and what kind of thought they had about it. We stimulated them to think about their neighborhood as well. After they had answered the questions, we applied a number of educational activities focused on the critical environmental education. No matter the tools, the purpose was always the same: reflect and record in an individual notebook the knowledge built and exchanged in the classroom. After the implementation of these educational activities, the same poll was applied again. That time the aiming was to evaluate whether and which knowledge they had gained, which kind of thoughts and behaviors were built in relation to the environment, to their neighborhood. Then, a comparison of the answers given before and after the activities that included mainly the students’ reality was made. An that point it was observed that it is necessary to take into account the students’ reality in order to develop a critical environmental education, which turns them into active pieces of the changing process instead of keeping them passive. They started wondering how the relationships worked, no matter the parts involved in, so they started seeing themselves as main characters, as people who are responsible for the environment where they were inserted in.