Percepções socioambientais de estudantes e suas relações com o meio ambiente: um estudo multicultural

Abstract

The relationship with the environment can be understood as an initial condition of our species, there is a tendency to concern with the environment and the elements that constitute it in an affective and subjective relationship. This interaction occurs mainly in educational training, whether formal or informal. This occurs with the awakening of human senses and feelings through the environment in which they are inserted that can be influenced in family, community and school contexts. In this formal teaching environment, Environmental Education (EA) is a strategy that favors this contact with the environment, for raising awareness, changing paradigms and solving environmental problems. This study had the central objective of getting to know the perceptions and socio-environmental representations of students from the 5th year of Elementary Education Initial Years of urban, public, municipal, central and peripheral schools in cities in the Northeast and South of Brazil and students of the 5th year of the 2nd Cycle of teaching schools in cities in the North of Portugal in relation to the affective, connective and behavioral dimensions of the environment in which they are inserted due to their formal and informal environmental experiences. For this, it was assumed that the attitude towards the environment can be represented by the environmental experiences in the places and the personal relationships that are established. To explain this posture, behavioral, affective dimensions of the relationship with the environment and nature in general were investigated. In addition, the importance devoted by students to the future consequences of their actions was evaluated, as well as socio-demographic variables and pro-environmental attitudes. 365 students participated in this study, enrolled in a total of 13 public municipal schools in Brazilian and Portuguese cities. This research was composed of instruments such as sociodemographic questionnaires, scales, spatial observation and activities voted for Environmental Education that measured cognitive, affective and behavioral dimensions in relation to the environment and nature in order to outline an explanatory model of the environmental posture that contemplate environmental experiences, knowledge of the environment and a psychosocial profile of affinity and socio-environmental attitudes. As a result, the use of multimethods was adequate for students to express their perceptions about the environment in general, which in short, there are great concerns and protagonism in the face of pro-environmental thoughts in students. Regardless of regions and countries, students transcend the need for behavioral changes and paradigms in humans with the environment.