Educação ambiental no cotidiano de alunos de uma escola pública de Fortaleza-CE

Abstract

Environmental Education (EE) emerges with the role of raising the awareness of the global population about the environmental problems resulting from human activities, where their practices are related to the routine of individuals and their consequences for the planet. It is one of the matters of education which targets subjects related to the man-environment interaction, raising a critical conscience on the environmental problems. This work seeks to understand how environmental education is included in the routine of 68 high school students of a public school located in the central region of Fortaleza, Ceará. For that such task, a semi- structured questionnaire was applied with 14 questions about environmental education and related to the students' daily routine. Subsequently a qualitative and quantitative analysis was performed. A questionnaire was also applied with the biology teacher of the three classes studied. The major influence of the school for the first year students was observed, either in projects that the school reported (38.09%), or projects that they had the opportunity to perform in the school environment (47.62%). For the second year students, 57.14% of students who answered that they practice EE at home and the great influence of the family on the attitudes of EE (60.71%) stood out. It was noticed that third graders said they did not know about EE projects in the state or neighborhood, even though they had been attending high school at the same school since the beginning. It was observed that students have little knowledge about EE projects developed at school or in their neighborhoods and state. It is noteworthy that the teacher mentioned some EE projects developed by the school and the State and that the lack of knowledge may be associated with poor dissemination of these projects or lack of interest of the students in participating on them. EE is an important topic to be discussed in school, as it is necessary to reflect how day-to-day human activities generate consequences on the planet in a broader and meaningful way.