THE PERSPECTIVE OF CURRICULUM ENVIRONMENTALIZATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION IN THE INITIAL TRAINING OF GEOGRAPHY TEACHERS

Abstract

: This article had as objective to present the main results of the research conducted on how the theme of Environmental Education is being addressed in the training courses for Geography teachers at Federal Universities of the southern half of Rio Grande do Sul. From this perspective, the focus of this proposal is on advocating for Curriculum Environmentalization  (CE) as a teaching strategy. The methodology was organized into three stages: a) Literature review; b) Documentary research; and c) Content Analysis by Bardin (2011), for data collection and interpretation. Among the available instruments, an online questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents. As results, we found that, the normative resolutions guiding teacher training, Geography and Environmental Education, show advances and setbacks in the released versions. Regarding the questionnaire responses, we noticed that course coordinators and teachers working with Environmental Education in the same course have different opinions on the subject. The vast majority of respondents associate studies on society and nature with Environmental Education. Furthermore, the Logical Sequence Frameworks (LSF) of the analyzed courses offer few mandatory subjects focused on Environmental Education, but, on the other hand, they provide electives throughout the sequence of the program. Finally, we believe that Curriculum Environmentalization, based on Behrend (2020), Mota (2020), and Rodrigues (2022), emerges as an approach strategy to mainstream Environmental Education in the training of Geography teachers.