O Bosque da Ciência como espaço educador ambiental no ensino básico

Abstract

The lifestyle adopted by the big cities has contributed to the distancing of people from the natural world. However, the Green Urban Parks (PVUs), present an excellent opportunity to interconnect nature and people, and thus contribute to the transformation of the personnature relationship. In the case of children and adolescents, schools are the major means of access to the natural environment and teachers are the mediators of students' relationships with and in nature. The present study proposed to understand the meanings given to the PVU Bosque da Ciência (BC) as a differentiating element in Environmental Education (EA) in its varied dimensions, by school groups of basic education in Manaus. This is descriptiveexploratory research through a case study. The instruments used were Walkthrough Observation, Behavioral Map Observation, Interview and Collective Design, the participants totaled 536 students and 25 teachers. The information generated by the observations allowed a descriptive analysis of the environment and behavior of teachers and students who participated in school visits in BC. This research presented an inventory of the educational potentials existing in BC. The natural elements were pointed out by the teachers as a stimulus for transdisciplinary practice, while for the students they provoked emotions, through sensory experiences. The students showed a desire to learn in this immersion in nature, in which there were reflective experiences that embraced the different objectives of EA for Environmental Citizenship. The BC was considered intrinsically educator by nature by most teachers, but some conditioned the educator character to the provision of trained mediation and the provision of educational practices to the school public. Thus, the BC management is presented, the challenge of offering training to teachers, in order to obtain the competence to carry out autonomous visits, with conditions to encourage productive discussions and guide students' discovery processes. At the end, some suggestions for BC management are presented.