Educação em ciências e a temática ambiental: trabalhando com a dimensão de valores

Abstract

In the dialogue between Environmental Education and Science teaching, we are faced with themes that must be worked on beyond the conceptual dimension, in view of the reality experienced and the search for social transformation. From the evaluative dimension, new ways of respecting the other and the environment are sought, in order to overcome the distance from the evident socio-environmental problems. Therefore, there is the importance of educational proposals, aimed at identifying and questioning the concepts and values present in today's society. In this perspective, this work aimed to identify and analyze, from an ethical perspective, the elements of the discourse related to the values expressed by elementary school students on the environmental theme, during Science classes, in which a pedagogical intervention was developed that involved a motivating topic. The study was conducted in 2018 and had as participants 25 students from an eighth grade class at a public school in the city of Itajubá - MG. All stages and classes that comprised the pedagogical intervention were recorded and had their main moments transcribed. In addition to this material, a transcript of the teacher / researcher field diary, the students' diaries, and the external observer's diary was also transcribed. The intervention involved six distinct stages that required a total of eight classes to be applied. The data were analyzed in the light of the theoretical and methodological framework that deals with Discourse Analysis of the French line, in addition to the contributions of studies dealing with the valuation dimension and Environmental Education. As a result, initially the meanings that emerged in the subjects' speeches involved ethical perspectives of anthropocentric / utilitarian values, denoting a greater or lesser inclination. In the most mobilizing stages of the intervention, the meanings touched on in the subjects' speeches moved quite expressively between the extremes of the ethical perspective of anthropocentric / utilitarian values and the ethical perspective environmentally desired from the environmental point of view. In this sense, it is considered that the discourses produced by the students and the senses related to nature were crossed by a relationship established with the school context, with the subjects involved, with society in general, but also with the pedagogical activity proposal. Despite the anthropocentric / utilitarian ethical perspective still being in evidence, other values were also mobilized and made the valuation dimension in the environmental theme coherent insofar as it allowed students to think and express new forms of relationship with nature. Thus, broader studies in the area are proposed.