Concepções de educação e educação ambiental nos trabalhos do I EPEA

Abstract

This research has been motivated by the necessity of understanding the essential concept of education and of having critical attitudes related to the common sense about the aims of education. Researches related to the concepts of education and environmental education can help us to understand the fundamental principles that are being chosen to justify and to carry out environmental education programs. So, trying to understand tendencies in environmental education researcher's conceptions in Brazil we carried out an analysis of the articles presented in The First Environmental Education Research Meeting (I EPEA). The main questions proposed are: 1 - what conceptions of education and environmental education can be identified in the articles presented in I EPEA? 2 - What evidences can be raised from these articles to help us to identify such conceptions? Through content analysis we tried to identify meaningful excerpts to the research purposes and to categorize them in a thematical process. The political dimension of education, linked to the process of social transformation and citizenship, was one of the main aspects find out in the articles. Participation, interdisciplinarity, values, the relationship between local and global aspects of environmental issues and controversial issues were objectives or methodological principles presented in I EPEA articles. Nevertheless, it is relevant to point out that we could find some elements that permit us to link them to a traditional view of education or a view that goes in the direction of technicality in education. Risks of a pragmatic view or of an instrumentalism conception of environmental education present in these articles are mentioned.