Resumo:
The treatment of environmental issues, in accordance with the understandings of municipal directors and the activities that are developed in the public-school units in which they work, awakens us to reflect on the possibilities and challenges that may be present when it comes to the development of actions that can mitigate the environmental crisis we are experiencing. In view of this, we are concerned with verifying the understandings of environmental issues and the educational process developed by directors of municipal public elementary schools in the initial years. With this purpose, we sought to identify and analyze the understandings that principals have on environmental issues, the pedagogical activities developed in school spaces and the possibilities and obstacles that principals associate with the development of pedagogical activities. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with directors of municipal elementary schools in the early years, in schools located in a region to the south of Minas Gerais, belonging to the Itajubá Regional Education Secretariat. After the data was transcribed, we based ourselves on Content Analysis, in the form of Thematic Analysis as a methodological process. The results and discussions indicated that the understandings of municipal directors’ influence decision-making regarding the development of pedagogical activities involving environmental issues in the school spaces they manage. In this sense, the possibility of building knowledge in these school spaces, regarding environmental issues, is directly related to the decision-making that is articulated by the principals, even if these are carried out in a democratic way. In this way, the partnerships that are established, the approach to environmental issues in the subjects, the mention of environmental issues in political pedagogical projects, are treated with a conservative perspective. In this sense, attempts to mitigate the environmental crisis only become unfeasible, since discussions around environmental issues and socio-environmental issues are treated in a disconnected manner, making it impossible to implement critical discussions in relation to the treatment of environmental issues and the public policies in school spaces. When treating environmental issues in a romanticized and isolated way, environmental problems tend to remain and worsen.
