Educação para a sustentabilidade: proposta de uma escala da concepção multidimensional da sustentabilidade

Abstract

The sustainability discourse has been a recurring issue in recent decades in the debate on the challenges faced by humanity in meeting the agenda of social problems and avoiding environmental degradation. In order to translate the discourse into practice, education for sustainability (EfS) is pointed out as fundamental in this process of training citizens in order to build a sustainable society. This research developed a scale of the multidimensional conception of sustainability of individuals throughout their academic formation in the context of higher education, conducted by the following question: How to measure the multidimensional conception of the sustainability of individuals throughout their education? The possibility of monitoring the conception of sustainability of everyone during their training, obtaining indicators that provide teachers and managers (public and / or private at different educational levels) with subsidies on progress towards the desired result, and that boost management of actions to be increased or implemented to reinforce the individual conception, addresses the need for an instrument. For this, in the literature review presents the multidimensional concept of sustainability, with EfS being the way that articulates and enhances the dimensions for the effectiveness of sustainability. The construction and validation of the scale were realized from the proposed theoretical model and other identified instruments, allowing the assessment of the multidimensional concept of sustainability of individuals in higher education (Administration, Accounting and Public Management) of a federal public institution, composed of 40 items distributed in the following dimensions: Social, Environmental, Material, Economic, Territorial, Cultural, Political-institutional, Ethics and Spiritual. Data considered valid obtained from 233 respondents, allowed to identify high rates of conception among the nine dimensions, but when asked about familiarity with specific terminologies related to sustainability, lower rates were found, demonstrating that educational actions need to be articulated in formation of individuals. Among the satisfactory results verified in the dimensions of sustainability, there was a higher level for Material and a lower level for Territorial, Spiritual and Cultural of respondents in relation to the multidimensional concept of sustainability.