Educação ambiental e práticas pedagógicas nos anos finais do ensino fundamental: enfoques e propostas nos últimos dez anos

Abstract

The Environmental Education (EE) studies, over the last two decades, have come across a multiplicity of approaches to EE that bring concepts, strategies and practices that branch out into a rich set of possibilities. This present work aimed to analyze the relationship between EE conceptions and the proposals of pedagogical practices developed with students of the final years of elementary school in public schools, having as reference articles published in the last ten years. To this end, the research began with the collection of journals on Environmental Education that were references among the most important for the EE area of the country, using as criteria: magazine's seniority, Qualis qualification and indexers. For this work was chosen the Brazilian Journal of Environmental Education because it was the one that best fit the criteria cited. Then, articles that presented results of EE practices proposed for the final years of elementary school were analyzed, seeking for the relationship between the conceptions adopted by the authors and the pedagogical practices carried out. The results of the study revealed that, in general, the articles bring a critical conception of Environmental Education, however, the methods adopted were about positivist nature, considered more traditional and limited to the conservationist aspects of EA. Most articles present a naive conception of EE as an attempt to harmonize man-nature; others present a non-critical naturalistic conception; with only three comprising EE starting from an environmental conception in a broader sense and seeing society and nature as an integrated whole.