Educação geográfica em diálogo com a cidade: cidadania é o que nós propomos!

Abstract

The socio-spatial, political, economic and environmental complexity that characterizes contemporary times encourages schools and geographical education to overcome old practices, innovate in their possibilities and undertake approaches that achieve the social quality of education. The "We propose! Citizenship and Innovation in Geographic Education" Project emerged from the perspective of a Geography teaching and learning that promotes the uniqueness of places. Also, it encourages reflection, discussion and the confrontation of everyday issues, and helps students become agents of change. This study was guided by an active, socioconstructivist teaching and learning methodology, prompted by the need to establish a dialogue between school practices and the student's city. Based on a qualitative approach and participatory approach, this research aim was to analyze the potential of the We Propose! Project (WPP) for developing territorial citizenship in the city of Fortaleza, Ceará. Territorial citizenship specifically encompasses the strategy of making the city itself the starting point for teaching and learning Geography as a pedagogical intervention. Considering this, a set of activities and actions were mobilized among high school students at a public school in the state of Ceará. These activities were designed based on the principles of the WPP, which are: partnership, socioconstructivism, research, the appreciation of different skills and the knowledge sharing. The achievement of these practices resonated in the school environment by fostering unprecedented procedures in the context in which they were implemented. These include: the city and neighborhood in the status of curricular content, the student acting as an investigator of their reality and maker of their own knowledge, and the school as an institution that researches and engages with its social context. Integrated with these results, the WPP actions strengthened university extension, initial and continuing teacher training, and the pursuit of the right to have rights as a democratic exercise within the public administration. Consequently, the thesis that the We Propose! Project induced a didactic-methodological perspective capable of influencing a new paradigm of geographical education among youth people in the suburbs of Fortaleza, Ceará, is circumscribed. However, implementing the WPP principles into school routines requires overcoming difficulties, as bureaucratized and rigid school routines may negatively impact innovative teaching and learning initiatives. Although attitudes such as autonomy and protagonism are always associated with students involved in the WPP, the project also requires an attitude of independence and protagonism from teachers who wish to implement the WPP methodology. The research sought to broaden the discussion about teaching Geography from the perspective of an educational proposal based on

establishing relationships of closeness, empowerment, and transformation between the student and the community. We acknowledge, as do the participants in this research, the WPP contributions to the education of young people, striving to make them more citizenship aware, more socially engaged, and aware of the responsibilities expected of them