A inserção da temática ambiental nos cursos de licenciatura em biologia, física, matemática e química da UNIFEI

Abstract

Brazilian legislation recommends the inclusion of Environmental Issues at different levels of schooling, including higher education. More specifically, a portion of normative instruments emphasize that Environmental Issues must be incorporated into the initial training of teachers, regardless of the area of knowledge or level of education in which future educators are bound to work. In addition, the field of education, in general, recognizes and recommends that different aspects of the political dimension of the environmental matter are present in the initial training of future teachers. In this context, in agreement with those who defend the presence of environmental issues in initial teacher training, an investigative study was developed, focused on teaching courses at a public University located in the south of the state of Minas Gerais. The question that guided the investigation was elaborated in this wise: what aspects of the political dimension of the environmental matter are emphasized in the training of undergraduate students in Biology, Physics, Mathematics and Chemistry at a public University in the state of Minas Gerais? It was possible to obtain research data from the contact with the Pedagogical Projects of the courses and from interviews that were conducted with the coordinators of the referred courses. The data analysis was inspired by the procedures proposed by content analysis. The results indicate that: a) the courses address the environmental issue in projects and extension work, but the disciplines in fact constitute a privileged position for the treatment of the environmental issue; b) there are little situations offered by courses that focus on the perspective of the political dimension of environmental issues; c) aspects of the environmental theme and its political dimension are little evidenced in the curriculum of certain disciplines and also in the reasoning of the coordinators who participated in this investigation. However, even though limitations were encountered, the efforts and initiatives of the degree courses to address environmental issues in the teacher training process were recognized. It is considered that the incorporation of the environmental issue and its political dimension in teacher training courses requires the construction of new meanings for what we call teacher training.