Saberes e fazeres dos professores de geografia referentes à educação ambiental nas escolas estaduais de ensino médio em Porto Nacional - TO

Abstract

Environmental Education (EE) is a pedagogical practice that can be developed in Formal Education, that is, it is the application of the environmental dimension in daily school life. Thus, this research was carried out in state public schools having as a focus the state schools of Porto Nacional - TO. Starting from the following research problem: how do geographic knowledge contribute to the Geography teacher in the practices related to Environmental Education? This way, the main objective of this paper was to analyze the relationship between the conceptions of Geography teachers and their teaching practice in high school, referring to Environmental Education in the State Schools of Porto Nacional - TO. Some specific objectives were established, such as: to investigate what is the knowledge that the teachers of Geography possess of Environmental Education; identify the actions of Geography teachers in Environmental Education; indicate which demands imply the inclusion of knowledge and practices for Environmental Education in public schools in Porto Nacional - TO. This research is justified because it is inserted within the conceptions and practices of Geography teachers as one of the conceptual pillars of the research, as it bases the investigation about the teaching of Geography in high school classes, with emphasis on the issues of EE, from a dialogue between conceptions and practices. Through the bibliographic review, we retrieve some concepts about the teaching of geography and how environmental education has been practiced. We seek to highlight the pedagogical knowledge, scientific knowledge, personal knowledge and the experience knowledge, considering that they are fundamental for the understanding of practices related to Environmental Education in the teaching of Geography. The methodology was based on a literature review on the studied subject. For this, a bibliographic research was conducted in books, theses, dissertations and articles about the importance of the conceptions and practices of teachers of Geography regarding to the Environmental Education in formal schools in Porto Nacional - TO, in the state public network and interviews were also conducted, questionnaires and observation of teachers' classes. We sought to make a characterization of schools, using as support the Political-Pedagogical Project of schools. From the data collected we identified the knowledge of teachers regarding EE. The obtained results offer an insight of how environmental education has been practiced in the researched area and the relationship with geography. From the elaborated framework of the revealed conceptions, it was possible to formulate some suggestions of intervention in EE for the researched schools. It is noteworthy that the importance of this research for the area lies in contributing to the reflection on the knowledge and practices that may permeate the EE and also by the contribution that it provides, not just in the conceptual approach.