Environmental education and higher education: An assessment of the understanding of environmental issues

Abstract

The present study aimed to analyze the transformations in participants' understanding of environmental issues, developed through higher education training based on the principles of Critical Environmental Education. For this investigation, the theoretical foundations of Critical Environmental Education (CEE) and Historical-Critical Pedagogy (HCP) were employed, with key theoretical references including Dermeval Saviani, Vygotsky, Loureiro, and other researchers in the field of critical/transformative Environmental Education. The research was conducted at the Federal Institute of Espírito Santo (IFES) – Colatina Campus, with participants comprising students from the undergraduate programs in Environmental Sanitation Technology and Administration. A qualitative approach was adopted as the methodology, characterized by an intervention-research framework, utilizing the hermeneutic-dialectical perspective for data analysis. The results indicated that the set of activities undertaken by the "Sowing the Green II" Project could contribute effectively to the training of environmental educators in the critical field, provided that the project is restructured in terms of duration and organization of the debate themes. Additionally, working with Critical Environmental Education by promoting theoretical debates on issues problematized by this approach can serve as a guideline for overcoming simplistic conceptions and isolated actions in Environmental Education.