The Political Dimension of Environmental Education in Brazil: some highlights from theses and dissertations
Author(s):
Luiz Marcelo De Carvalho (presenting / submitting) Heluane Aparecida Lemos De Souza
Conference:
ECER 2016
Network:
30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)
Format:
Poster

Session Information

30 SES 03 A, Emotions and the Political

Paper/Poster Session

Time:
2016-08-23
17:15-18:45
Room:
NM-A105
Chair:
Leif Östman

Contribution

Probably, the need to consider the political dimension of environmental education (EE) or the possibility of relating environmental education to “political education” is one of the most stressed and central ideas not just in EE pedagogical projects, curricular policies and documents, but also in academic texts around the world. Whatever the educational perspective adopted in our research or in our EE projects, its political nature is expressed with all its might.

Considering this intrinsic characteristic of the educational process, the attempt to understand what we mean by “political dimension” in our practices, reflections or research reports on EE arises as a significant task. It is also plausible to argue that this term – political dimension - carries a variety of meanings and “understandings” that depend on a number of factors, including ideological and political options.

Taking into account that our academic texts bring not only a sense of reality, or not only represent reality, but also incorporate our beliefs and desires, we have considered exploring the meaning-making process regarding the political dimension of EE in these texts as a challenge. Which meanings arise when we explore these processes from academic texts, such as papers, essays, theses and dissertations, and so forth?

There is no room for naivety. There are great risks of inconsequent spontaneity and pragmatism when we are faced with the real meaning of the possibilities of education and their different interconnections with the political dimension. There seems to be no other alternative than to attempt to understand such a proposition in more depth, trying to explain the irreconcilable contradictions that emerge in relation to statements concerning the complex and controversial dimensions of the relationship between education and politics.

Therefore, considering this background, it seems reasonable to attempt to understand what we mean by political dimension in our practices, research reports or theoretical reflections on EE. It is also reasonable to argue that this term – political dimension - carries a variety of “meanings” and “understandings” that depend on a number of factors that obviously include the ontological, epistemological, ideological and political perspectives of scholars and educators.

Bearing these assumptions in mind and considering that:

1 - when we refer to the political dimension of EE in research reports, a wide variety of meanings can probably arise from such texts;

2 – when we report our research, we not only record the significance attributed by our subjects to this dimension, but we also express our understanding, meanings and desires related to the political dimension of education;

3 – concepts related to the political dimension such as “citizens”, “citizenship”, “rights and duties”, “democracy”, “autonomy”, “liberty”, “pluralism” and others, as all social construction, are historical and have different meanings in different periods of our history;

we are trying to explore the “meaning-making process” regarding political dimensions made explicit by researchers in their EE research reports.

Along these lines, some research issues have guided the investigation process that we report on in this paper:

- Have EE researchers stressed aspects related to the political dimension of Education in their investigations?

- Has EE research carried out in Brazil been designed in a way that helps us to clarify possible relationships between environmental education and political dimensions?

- What aspects related to this relationship have been pointed out by researchers?

Trying to answer these questions, we intend, specifically by means of a documentary analysis and a meta-analysis of research, to explore some ideas regarding the relationship between EE and the political dimensions stressed in theses and dissertations related to environmental education carried out in Brazil.

Method

As it can be seen from the research questions, the investigation we have carried out focuses on attempting to understand meaning-making processes concerning the relationship between EE research and the political dimension of education. As a starting point, research reports are not being taken as a picture of reality, but rather as results from discursive interactions, as links in a verbal communication chain and answers to statements already produced and that will probably stimulate other statements (Ferreira 2002). Considering this assumption, we cannot talk about data reported in research as reliable records of reality, but as the results of a look at reality with plenty of intentions (Martins, 2006). According to Payne (2009), the aim is that the analyses of EE research can contribute to our understanding of research texts as part of the construction process of discourses about EE. It is a way of clarifying the meanings we have constructed about these educational practices and, thus, our understanding of their identities, as a field of educational practices and research. Considering the abstract as an autonomous text and a means with its own particular characteristics or, in other words, a discursive genre (c.f. Bakhtin, 2010), Ferreira (2002) considers justifiable and appropriate that we take these texts and analyze them in terms of state-of-the-art approaches in a given academic production. In Bakhtin´s dialogic perspective, each abstract participates in the “verbal communication chain” (Ferreira, 2002, P. 267) Therefore, we tried to explore and systematize possible meanings attributed to the relationship between EE and the political dimension of education in theses and dissertations on EE. The documents analyzed were selected from the Database of Theses and Dissertations on EE developed in Brazil, which was organized by the Projeto EArte, an inter-institutional research group that are carrying out a broad EE state-of-the-art investigation.

Expected Outcomes

The analysis carried out enables us to consider significant aspects related to the political perspectives associated with EE/ESD research: 1 – There are many abstracts, in fact most of them, which do not make any reference to or incorporate any of the indicators chosen by us to identify researchers´ intentions to explicit political perspectives in their studies. Nevertheless, we cannot interpret this trend as if these researches were politically neutral or emptied of political content. Whatever the options of presenting their research, the political nature is revealed in different perspectives. 2 - When we take the macrotrends of EE proposed by Layrargues and Lima (2009; 2014) as a reference, on the one hand, the association of some nucleuses of significance with the "conservative" and "pragmatic" macrotrends is inevitable. On the other, it is important to consider that there are also critical perspectives that have been considered by many researchers. Considering these trends, we should be cautious not to give the wrong idea that critical and emancipatory perspectives are taking hold of hegemonic spaces in the field of Environmental Education research without experiencing conflicts, controversies or political-ideological struggles. 3 – There is a significant body of research carried out in postgraduate studies in which indicators such as “democracy, citizenship, social justice, participation and cooperation”, among others, are made reference to in their abstracts. However, despite this observed trend, the results of the analyses undertaken here reinforce the idea that the relation – education and political dimension – would be taken a priori and unquestionably by researchers. The same considerations were presented by Santos, Carvalho and Levinson (2014). As shown in the analyses here, these authors also noticed that this political dimension has not been problematized, presented as objectives or foci of the investigation.

References

Bakhtin, M. M. (2010). Estética da Criação Verbal. [Aesthetics of Verbal Creation]. São Paulo, SP: Ed. WMF Martins Fontes. Ferreira, N. S. A. (2002) As pesquisas denominadas “estado da arte” [State of Art research]. Educação & Sociedade, Campinas, SP. XXIII(79), 257 – 272. Layrargues, P.P., & Lima, G.F.C. (2014). As macrotendências político-pedagógicas da educação ambiental brasileira. [The politic-pedagogical macrotendencies of Brazilian environmental education]. Ambiente & Sociedade, XVII(1), 23-40. Martins, I. (2006). Dados como diálogo: construindo dados a partir de registros de observação de interações discursivas em salas de aula de ciências. [Data as dialog: data construction from observation record of discursive interactions in science lessons]. In: F. M. T. Santos, & I. M Greca, (Eds.) A Pesquisa em Ensino de Ciências no Brasil e suas Metodologias. [Research in science teaching in Brazil and methodologies] Ijuí, RS: Ed. UNIJUÍ. Payne, P. G. (2009). Framing research: conceptualizing, contextualizing, representation, legitimization. Pesquisa em Educação Ambiental, 4(2), 49 – 77. SANTOS, W. L. P.; CARVALHO, L. M.; LEVINSON, R. (2014) A dimensão política da educação ambiental em investigações de revistas brasileiras de Ensino de Ciências. [The Political Dimension of Environmental Education into Research of Brazilian Journals of Science Education] Revista Brasileira de Educação para a Ciência, Rio de Janeiro, 14, 199 – 213.

Author Information

Luiz Marcelo De Carvalho (presenting / submitting)
University of State of São Paulo - UNESP
Rio Claro
Heluane Aparecida Lemos De Souza
University of State of São Paulo - Unesp, Campus Rio Claro, Brazil

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