Opposite shores: a case study of environmental perception and social representations of public school teachers in Brazil

ABSTRACT

This present study was aimed at analyzing the environmental perception of teachers from two Brazilian public schools located on opposite shores of a socio-environmentally vulnerable area by means of drawings as well as the data collected from questionnaires. The 2010 Brazilian Census reported that nearly 2.7 million people live in such conditions in the macrometropolis of São Paulo, including the municipalities of São Bernardo do Campo (SBC) and Diadema. Both schools included in this study are located in such cities as they are the most populated ones and surround a very important water reservoir called Billings dam. The SBC school is within a more environmentally preserved area, whereas the Diadema school is in a region with higher environmental impacts. In this sense, we formulated the following research question: “How will this influence the environmental perception of the teachers?” The activity was attended by 41 teachers from different academic backgrounds. These teachers have mostly shown a naturalistic view of the environment, followed by an anthropocentric view.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental education
• environmental perception
• social representations
• Billings
• schools
• Brazil

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the CAPES [grant number PNPD – process 086/2014-2015].