Campo de pesquisa da educação ambiental e suas relações com o tema mudanças climáticas

Abstract

Currently, climate change has been the subject of discussions due to environmental issues. The greenhouse effect is a natural phenomenon that has maintained life on the planet millions of years ago, thanks to the retention of heat by some gases. However, its intensification, caused by the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, has caused climate change, resulting in increased temperatures, loss of biodiversity, increased droughts and concentration of rains, among other consequences. Human activities are considered to be primarily responsible for intensifying climate change. It is believed that the human being can change this reality and one of the tools is environmental education. It should be emphasized that this theme is of great relevance, so it should be more present in Brazilian publications and in the ambit of environmental education in schools. This dissertation aims to analyze scientific articles on Environmental Education published in national journals in the last ten years, in addition, discuss how the theme “climate change” has been addressed in Brazilian publications within the same clipping. A “State of the Art” survey was carried out based on qualitative and quantitative approaches. We used the Content Analysis technique. For that, we searched for articles published in periodicals in the areas of education/teaching with status A1, A2, B1, B2. In total, 613 articles were analyzed, of which only 3.76% worked on climate change. If publications continue in the same line of research, the goal of developing activities from the perspective of environmental education for citizenship, ethics, critical thinking, and attitudes toward climate change control will not be achieved. We also analyzed data from the Environmental Education projects of the state schools of the state of Goiás. According to this analysis, we did not find explicit actions focused on the subject in question. Finally, we proceeded to develop the Environmental Education project in a critical perspective, with the theme of climate change. There is a need for more discussion by environmental educators about the critical view of this aspect of Environmental Education. It is suggested that teachers should be continuously trained with courses and/or cycles of debates that can address climate change in Environmental Education projects, in order to contemplate currents in the emancipatory, critical and transformative perspectives.