CONTRIBUTIONS OF PAULO FREIRE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE TO THE CONTINUED TRAINING OF BIOLOGY TEACHERS IN CRITICAL ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION IN A REGION OF SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICT: THE CASE OF THE TOURIST, INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL POLO OF PORTO DE GALINHAS - PERNAMBUCO
Biology teacher training. Freirian Theory of Knowledge. Environmental education. Socio-environmental conflict. Public school.
Humanity has faced relevant challenges throughout its journey on planet Earth, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, wars, hunger and poverty, in addition to those directly related to the environment. The modern, globalized lifestyle, which tells us what we need to be and have, makes it difficult to visualize the close relationship between environmental imbalances, social issues and our own actions. However, we are experiencing an “authentic planetary emergency” (Cachapuz; et al., 2011, p. 15). In this sense, we understand that education is the limit act necessary for transformation and overcoming the naivety that makes citizens passive and unable to act effectively in their realities in order to transform them. It is through Environmental Education (EE), notably that from a critical perspective, that we glimpse the possibility of this transformation. Bearing in mind that initial teacher training is not always sufficient to develop training that takes into account the dimensions that emancipatory/liberating education encompasses, we identify in continued training supported by Freirian thought, the possibility of giving new meaning and building together with teaching teachers basic an EA that places human beings in and with the world. Therefore, we ask ourselves: What are the contributions of Paulo Freire's theory of knowledge to the process of continued training of Biology teachers, from a Critical Environmental Education perspective in a region of socio-environmental conflict? Our hypothesis is that Freire's theory of knowledge offers the necessary foundations for the training process to be meaningful and, thus, enables the teaching practice of the social actors involved to present a critical and humanizing bias when working on themes involving EE. Thus, we defined the general objective of this research as understanding the contributions of Paulo Freire's theory of knowledge to the continued training of biology teachers from a critical EA Education perspective. Specifically, we aim to: understand the conditions under which teaching work takes place, based on Freire's theory of knowledge, with a view to building a training process for and with teachers, involving themes that generate EE; propose and analyze the process of continued in-service training using Paulo Freire's theory of knowledge as a basis for proposing actions with critical EA and; analyze the teaching practice of biology teachers, regarding the planning and approach to critical EE. To this end, the research will be of a qualitative nature, of the participatory research type, comprising the following stages: exploratory phase, continued training of teachers based on Freire's theory of knowledge in critical EE and monitoring of their teaching practices after the training process. Data will be collected in a school located in an area of socio-environmental conflict through direct participant observation, systematic observation, semi-structured interviews with teachers who participate in continuing education, documentary analysis of the school's Pedagogical Political Project, lesson plan and others that may emerge from the field and the “Spoken Map” tool of Participatory Rural Diagnosis; they will be analyzed with reference to content analysis (BARDIN, 2002).