Critical Environmental Education and participatory art: the construction of reflection and action in a school in the Baixada Fluminense

Abstract

This article integrates part of a larger research entitled "Environmental Education and Participatory Art: social-environmental issues through sensitivity and criticality". Here, it presents a reflection on the contributions that the Environmental Critical Education associated with the participatory art can bring to the specific formation of students, in what refers to the environmental theme. The outline of this investigation was through a practice that linked cognitive and affective elements, from the analysis of local issues, promoting the collective and cooperative participation of those involved, based on aesthetic experience and questioning capacity. The methodology was characterized by a qualitative approach, with the principles of a participant research, applied in two high school classes of a state school of Baixada Fluminense, in an interval of three months. Two instruments were used to collect data - observation and drawings produced by the students - that made it possible to analyze the representations and the imagination of the students about the environment that surrounds them. Evaluating the activities and productions throughout this work, we take the students to a critical observation of their environment, from a social and historical perspective, promoting a learning with significant transformation potential, displacing contents, which are usually approached in a generalist and decontextualized way, to the reality of learners.