http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8736-8884
Synopsis
Since October 2019, Chile has experienced an intense crisis based on a social explosion. The citizens of the country, which is a member of the OECD and was poised to host COP25, have been demonstrating against deepening inequalities. The movement’s demands include better free public education and the end to the extractive model and “sacrifice zones.”
This thesis was written during the long prelude to the outbreak of the crisis. Through the voices of students and teachers it seeks to contribute to answering the question: What meanings of the environment emerge in schools today? From the theoretical-methodological framework of complex thinking, knowledge is understood as a “web” from which meanings emerge in context, providing a multi-referential view of the phenomenon and contributing to understand its structure and content.
In the case of structure, the findings from discussion groups with secondary students reveal an itinerary of configuration of environmental knowledge whose categories correspond to co-implicated spheres: (i) subjective understanding (“Starting from oneself”); (ii) consideration of an Other in the construction of “Us”; and, (iii) “Operational knowledge” such as national policies related to the environment. These spheres together describe intersubjective knowledge with its central axis in experiences at school and community.
In the case of content, in-depth interviews with teachers reveal the purposes underlying their decision to include environmental issues in their teaching practices. The purpose of social transformation is transversal to all categories and the meanings of environment are configured as a new dimension of inequality. When this transversality is “read” in its context it can be interpreted in the light of Latin American Environmental Thought, proposing an “interweaving” of ecology, politics and education, and underlining social transformation as key to understanding the emergence of environmental knowledge from local schools.
Finally, place is emphasized as a condition of meanings and actions. This dimension is capable of contributing to the call to contextualize environmental education, highlighting the configuration of different meanings produced through socio-historical processes, with a view to the development of educational projects and policies in the framework of local and global crises and drawing attention to them as signposting dangers and opportunities in context.
Supervisors:
Phd. Luis Manuel Flores González, Phd. Álvaro Salinas, Phd. Gonzalo Salazar and Phd. Per Sund.
Conferring University: Department of Education, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
Year of award: 2019
Associated Papers:
Condeza-Marmentini, A.; Flores-González, L. Configurations and Meanings of Environmental Knowledge: Transitions from the Subjective Experience of Students towards the Intersubjective Experience of Us. Sustainability 2019, 11, 3050.
Condeza-Marmentini, A.; Flores-González, L. Teachers’ Transgressive Pedagogical Practices in Context: Ecology, Politics, and Social Change. Sustainability 2019, 11, 6145.