Portraits of the Future Drawn by Children or the (Un)sustainable Relationship Between Man and Environment from Children's Point of View

Author(s):

Maria Pacheco FigueiredoAna Moura ArrozRosalina Gabriel Luzia Rodrigues

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

25. Research on Children's Rights in Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

25 SES 03, Issues of Methods and Design in Researching Children's Rights

Paper Session

Time:

2009-09-28

14:00-15:30

Room:

NIG, Seminarraum

Chair:

Nina Thelander

Contribution

This paper will present data on children's perspectives about the future, trying to seize the meaning of their expectations, the nuances of their positive and negative evaluations and the problems worrying them, with special emphasis on environmental ones, as part of a larger research project, developed by the Group for Environmental Education at the University of the Azores (αβγ) on the representations of people about the environment. The focus on children's perspectives about the enviornment (Bonnet, & Williams, 1989; Makus, & Musser, 1997; Alerby, 2000; Cobern, 2000; Jeronen, & Kaikkonen, 2002; Loughland, Reid, & Petocz, 2002; Loughland, Reid, Walker, & Petocz, 2003; Hyun, 2005) is based on the assumption that the environment and the future are two matters that directly affect children's lives and that accordingly to Article 12 from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), children who are capable of forming their own views have the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting them (United Nations, 1989). The study also draws on views of children's conceptual development which argue that from an early age, children reflect on the world and even on abstract phenomena (Case, 1999; Keil, 1999). We also highlight the corpus of Sociology of Childhood which, alongside with the movement of the Rights of the Child, has considered childhood as a particular social group, and children as social actors, in their own right (Cerisara, 2004, Corsaro, 1997; Saramago, 2001; Sarmento, 2004), sustaining an image of children as members of the society with knowledge, skills, strength and power (Bruner, 1996; Dahlberg, Moss & Pence, 1999), qualified experts on their own lives and holding perspectives and interests that are best expressed by themselves (Christensen & James, 2005; Graue & Walsh, 2002; Lewis & Lindsay, 2000). In previous papers (Arroz, Gabriel, Palos, & Rodrigues, 2007; Neilson, Gabriel, Arroz, & Cordeiro, 2008; Rodrigues, Arroz, Gabriel, & Neilson, 2009; Gabriel, Arroz, Neilson, & Rodrigues, 2009), we've presented children's qualitatively different ways of conceiving the environment which were found to be restricted to descriptions of green spaces, reflecting a view of environment as utopia, an idyllic concept which is not related to the environmental problems identified and feared by children. In this paper we intend to explore this contradiction and it's consequences for an informed participation by children in environmental issues and environmental education practices.

Method

Recognizing our "not knowing" about the content of the thought of children, this research called upon different types of visual and verbal data. The 75 children, ten years old from one of the nine Azorian islands, produced data through a) photography, b) free associations, c) drawings and d) informal interviews. Data analysis combined: a) content analysis – descriptive-interpretive, thematic and phenomenographic, b) comparisons between present and future drawings, and c) an exploratory multivariate analysis of the environmental problems that most concern the children.

Expected Outcomes

Eleven ways of conceptualizing the environment were identified, all positive and related to a green nature. Humans are included in the environment only as caring for it or protecting it. In a clear contradiction, the views of the future describe environmental concerns which mainly gravitate around the destructive power of man and the occurrence of various natural hazards. These prevailing negative views anticipate the occurrence of environmental degradation associated with the replacement of natural spaces for constructed ones. These findings are explored in terms of (1) awareness of the responsibility we all share in the management of environmental problems, (2) highlighting issues absent in the results, such as over-exploitation of resources, global warming, destruction of habitats or consumerism, while (3) focusing on hope in the human capacity to reverse the problems, since most children felt that the environment would worsen and couldn't anticipate solutions to renew or restore the systems.

References

Alerby, E. (2000). A way of visualising children’s and young people’s thoughts about the environment: a study of drawings. Environmental Education Research, 6(3), 206-222. Arroz, A. M., Gabriel, R., Palos, A. C., & Rodrigues, L. C. (2007, September). Our future drawn by children: Environmental images and worries. Paper presented at Sustainability in Practice: From Local to Global International Conference, Kingston University, London, United Kingdom. Bonnet, M., & Williams, J. (1998). Environmental education and primary children’s attitudes towards nature and the environment. Cambridge Journal of Education, 28(2), 159-174. Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Case, R. (1999). Conceptual development. In M. Bennett (Ed.), Developmental Psychology (pp. 36-54). Philadelphia: Psychology Press. Cerisara, A. B. (2004). Em busca do ponto de vista das crianças nas pesquisas educacionais: primeiras aproximações. In M. J. Sarmento e A. B. Cerisara (Orgs.), Crianças e miúdos: Perspectivas sociopedagógicas da infância e educação (pp. 35-54). Porto: ASA. Christensen, P., & James, A. (Orgs.) (2005). Investigação com crianças. Perspectivas e práticas (Trad. M. Cruz). Porto: ESE Paula Frassinetti (original em inglês, 2000). Cobern, W. (2000). Everyday thoughts about nature. A worldview investigation of important concepts students use to make sense of nature with specific attention of science. Netherlands: Kluwer Academic. Corsaro, W. A. (1997). The sociology of childhood. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Dahlberg, G., Moss, P., & Pence, A. R. (1999). Beyond quality in early childhood education and care: postmodern perspectives. London: Falmer Press. Gabriel, R., Arroz, A. M., Neilson, A. L., & Rodrigues, L. C. (2009, January). O Ambiente não é qualquer coisa!: diversidade de perspectivas das crianças. Paper presented at X Congreso de Psicología del Ambiente – Comportamiento humano y alteraciones globales, Lisboa, Portugal. Graue, M. E., & Walsh, D.l J. (2002). Investigação etnográfica com crianças. Teorias, métodos e ética (Trad. A. M. Chaves). Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (original em inglês, 1998). Hyun, E. (2005). How is young children’s intellectual culture of perceiving nature different from adults’?. Environmental Education Research, 11(2), 199-214. Jeronen, E., & Kaikkonen, M. (2002). Thoughts of children and adults about the environment and the environmental education. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 11(4), 341-353. Keil, F. C. (1999). Cognition, content, and development. In M. Bennett (Ed.), Developmental psychology (pp.165-181). Philadelphia: Psychology Press. Lewis, A., & Lindsay, G. (2000). Researching children’s perspective. Buckingham: Open University Press. Loughland, T., Reid, A., & Petocz, P. (2002). Young people’s conceptions of environment: a phenomenographic analysis. Environmental Education Research, 8 (2), 187-197. Loughland, T., Reid, A., Walker, K., & Petocz, P. (2003). Factors influencing young people’s conceptions of environment. Environmental Education Research, 9(1), 3-20. Malkus, A., & Musser, L. (1997, April). Environmental concerns in school-age children. Paper presented at the meeting for the Society for Research in Child Development, Washington, DC. Neilson, A. L., Gabriel, R., Arroz, A. M., & Cordeiro, L. M. (2008, August). Considering relationships of words, thoughts and knowledge: Following ecological principles to enhance research and education. Paper presented at 93rd Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting, Milwaukee (Winsconsin), United States of America. Oliveira-Formosinho, J. O. (Org.) (2008). A escola vista pelas crianças. Porto: Porto Editora. Oliveira-Formosinho, J. O., & Araújo, S. B. (2008). Escutar as vozes das crianças como meio de (re)construção de conhecimento acerca da infância: algumas implicações metodológicas. In J. Oliveira-Formosinho (Org.), A escola vista pelas crianças (pp. 11-29). Porto: Porto Editora. Rodrigues, L. C, Arroz, A. M., Gabriel, R., & Neilson, A. L. (2009, January). O Ambiente no futuro: representações e preocupações de crianças terceirenses. Paper presented at X Congreso de Psicología del Ambiente– Comportamiento humano y alteraciones globales, Lisbon, Portugal. Saramago, S. S. (2001) Metodologias de pesquisa empírica com crianças. Sociologia, Problemas e Práticas. 35, 9-29. Sarmento, M. J. (2004). As culturas da infância na encruzilhada da segunda modernidade. In M. J. Sarmento & A. B. Cerisara (Orgs.), Crianças e miúdos. Perspectivas sociopedagógicas da Infância e Educação (pp. 7-34). Porto: Edições ASA. Sarmento, M. J., & Cerisara, A. B. (Orgs.) (2004). Crianças e miúdos. Perspectivas sociopedagógicas da Infância e Educação. Porto: Edições ASA. United Nations (1989). Convention on the Rights of the Child, Adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly, resolution 44/25 of 20 November 1989.

Author Information

Maria Pacheco Figueiredo

Polytechnic Institute of Viseu

School of Education

Viseu

174

Ana Moura Arroz

Azorean Biodiversity Group, CITA-A, University of Azores, Portugal

Rosalina Gabriel

Azorean Biodiversity Group, CITA-A, University of Azores, Portugal

Luzia Rodrigues

Azorean Biodiversity Group, CITA-A, University of Azores, Portugal

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