Agroecologia e educação ambiental: trajetórias de uma escola do campo para a sustentabilidade e sociobiodiversidade

Abstract

This dissertation originates from the existence of initiatives for implementing an educational policy in rural schools located in settlement areas, resulting from the collaboration between different actors, including rural social movements, rural educators, and peasant workers, in partnership with universities, academics, and the Public Power. The research presents a case study of a high school and vocational school in a land reform area in the municipality of Madalena, state of Ceará, with the aim of investigating how Agroecology and Environmental Education are contributing to sustainability and socio-biodiversity through the school's curricular strategies. Using a qualitative approach to exploratory and descriptive research, data collection techniques and instruments were employed, such as document analysis, conversation circles, observations, and questionnaires. Discourse analysis was used for data interpretation. The subjects of the research were managers, educators, and students. Regarding the results, it was observed that the rural school faces significant challenges, going beyond the role of a simple educational institution in the rural environment, becoming a territory of struggle for a new rural development project, consolidating itself as an educational policy in the state education network of Ceará. The discourses of the research subjects highlight the importance of the school project, the rural environment, and Rural Education from the perspective of agroecological Environmental Education in their lives. Document analysis revealed that the school employs various curricular strategies, with research as an educational principle and socially productive work in agroecological and Environmental Education practices. The results also demonstrate that Environmental Education and Agroecology converge within Rural Education across the school's various educational times and spaces, but some educators still lack epistemological and methodological awareness of these categories to strengthen the Rural Education project for sustainability and socio-biodiversity. The work highlights the relevance of this educational policy within Ceará's state education network, which requires further studies on this specific topic, particularly involving the trajectory of high school and vocational rural schools and their importance to society. The rural school is an achievement of the struggles of social movements and peasant workers, demanding a new perspective on development for rural settlement areas through agroecological and Environmental Education practices, pointing to the complexity of an emancipatory curriculum for human transformation, aimed at forming the new man and woman of the rural environment in harmony with local biodiversity and traditional knowledge.