Environmental education in television narratives: a Brazilian case study

Abstract

This article discusses recent Brazilian research on the relationship between environmental education and cultural studies. Television narratives about the environment and/or sustainability in our everyday lives are used to pose some initial questions about this relation. First, culture is discussed briefly showing how it potentially relates to teaching and informs our role as environmental educators. We argue that culturalist perspectives on research in environmental education politicise teaching practices, even though they are in a context that strays from prerogatives that envisage a future world marked by sustainable development and a green economy. We investigate the impacts of television narratives and images on our everyday lives wherein we are consistently taught particular written and visual messages about how to plan for our future. Examples are draw from the teaching effects of a Brazilian television programme called Repórter Eco, broadcast on a public television network, including the sustainable management of the baru (a typical tree from the Brazilia Cerrado). We argue the educational aspects of television programmes should receive critique, as the relationships established between people and various media artifacts produce particular meanings and ways of seeing the world. This presents a challenge for teachers as examining these subjective ways carefully requires critical examination, not only in terms of education for sustainability or environmental preservation, but also teaching using media.

Keywords:

• Environmental education
• cultural studies
• television
• cultural teaching

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This is about a special series on Channel 4 called The Great Global Warming Swindle (A Grande Farsa do Aquecimento Global), broadcast in 2007 and directed by Martin Durkin, and the adaptation of the programme Chaos in the Climate, from the BBC, broadcast by Rede Globo in 2007, and directed by Flávia Varella and Roberto Cavalcanti.

2 TV Cultura is associated with the Padre Anchieta Foundation – Centro Paulista de Rádio e TV Educativas, founded in 1967 by the State Government of São Paulo (BR).

3 The American Shot is a more open plan, which covers approximately 2/3 of the subject. The person appears from the knees or belt up.

4 The Natura Cosméticos S.A. company was founded in 1969 by Luiz da Cunha Seabra in the city of São Paulo. It sells hygiene products, perfume, cosmetics. In 1983, it was the first Brazilian company to work and aim at other markets abroad. They created the project called ‘Ekos International’, with a strategy of selling products only from this line, ‘exploring the image of Brazilian biodiversity with products only made of natural ingredients’ (Alves 2006, 64).

5 The human figure is seen from the chest up.

6 The Cerrado biome presents various phytophysionomies, among them the typical cerrado, which is characterised by showing trees spaced out from one another, having vegetation between them (Ribeiro and Walter 1998).

7 Voice narration is used both in Brazil and France for situations in which the source of the voice does not appear at the time we hear it. In the USA, there is a distinction between voice-off and voice-over, the first is used for the voice of a fictitious person, who is in the scene at the moment, but which is part of it. In the case of voice-over, the speech comes from another place (Doane 1983).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leandro Belinaso

Leandro Belinaso is professor at the Department of Teaching Methodology of Santa Catarina Federal University/Brazil. He received his Ph.D. in Education at Rio Grande do Sul Federal University / Brazil in 2007. His last project aims to research the ways in which we are taught about “environmental sustainability”, through images, mainly published in journalistic artifacts in Brazil.

Lúcia Estevinho

Lúcia Estevinho is professor at the Instituto of Biology at Federal University of Uberlândia. Ph.D. in Education from the State University of Campinas in 2005. Research in Environmental Education and images.

Mariana Brasil Ramos

Mariana Brasil Ramos is a professor at the Department of Teaching Metodology at Federal University of Santa Catarina. Her research focuses in how cinema, TV and other audiovisual languages work to establish relationships of meaning between viewers and scientific discourses. Specifically, she defends the need of familiarizing science students with this kind of languages in order to enable less naive readings of them.