The concept of ecosystem as a space-time delimitation in environmental education research: implications for science / biology teaching

• Autor(a) principal: Kato, Danilo Seithi
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Kawasaki, Clarice Sumi, de Carvalho, Luiz Marcelo
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Actio (Curitiba)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.utfpr.edu.br/actio/article/view/12291
• topic: Educação; ensino-aprendizagem; Ciências; Educação Ambiental; Construção de Sentido; Ensino; Ecologia; Environmental Education; Meaning construction; Education; Ecology

This paper originates from a doctoral thesis aimed at investigating the concept of ecosystem adopted in thesis and dissertations in Environmental Education from 1980 to 2009 in Brazil. Based on the characterization of these investigations, we sought to explore the meanings and understandings developed for the ecological concept of ecosystem in these works, taking the relationship between the indicators resulting from these analyses as characterization of the research discourse in environmental education. The focus of this paper is to discuss the meanings and understandings that we have developed regarding aspects of the time and space delimitation of an ecosystem, as well as its implications for the science/biology teaching.  The methodological procedures are based on the dialogical discourse analysis perspective and are situated in the context of the qualitative research in education, in consonance with state of the art investigations concerning knowledge production. The results showed diverging understandings that can be grasped from different perspectives involving the concept of ecosystem, even if such understandings are not directly stated.  Therefore, the analyses result shows efforts to approach the meanings originally used in Ecology, as a way of validating the scientific knowledge produced and addressing, timidly, political and social elements that involve environmental issues. From the data analyzed in this paper, it is possible to draw conclusions about possible repercussions - of perceived meanings and understandings - on the discourse of Ecology´s curricular contents teaching related with environmental issues in the Natural Sciences Education. These meanings relate to the propensity of research towards overcoming contradictory and dichotomous understandings found in Environmental Education (such as those related to sustainable development or sustainability; balance or harmony; human-being, culture or nature) as possible ideological positions, which are grasped from the concept of ecosystem, even when such understandings are not directly articulated.