Educação ambiental e teoria crítica : a dialética da emancipação na formação socioambiental de servidores de uma Universidade Pública do estado de São Paulo

Abstract

In light of a potential environmental collapse due to the predominant modern production system on the planet, which threatens life on Earth, the critical and emancipatory Environmental Education (EE) plays a significant role in its public social function in order to prompt reflections, presenting questions, stimulating and monitoring change processes, propose directions, participate in structuring policies and collaborate in preparing people for critical and transformative political participation. In this challenge, the objective of this research concerns the analysis of a social-environmental training project that includes technical-administrative public servants of a Higher Education institution (HEI) in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Based on the Critical Theory framework, the Frankfurt School and Emancipatory Environmental Education, this study will investigate the potentially emancipatory elements emerging from the pressure between what has been experienced and what is proposed in this project, and will also discuss what these elements are based on and their contribution to revisiting emancipation in EE. To achieve this goal, the method is structured in a qualitative, research-participant approach that includes focus group techniques in the project coordination group, participant observation and document analysis of the project coordinating group. The results were organized in two sections: the first one is a self-critical report of the project, according to the temporal sequence of actions development. The second section involved the analysis of data into two central categories: 1. “the dialectic of emancipation in the socio-environmental training project of public servants”, comprising the subcategories of emancipatory EE, autonomy and freedom; and 2. “dialectics of the socio-environmental training of public servants”, containing the subcategories of capillarity, learn-by-doing and participatory-action-research, which represent nodal points of the socio-environmental training project of public servants articulated to the central theme of emancipation. A new emergent category was that of "non-teachers" as a reflective potential on instrumental reason in higher education.The potential emancipatory elements that emerged in this project, which contribute to revisiting the complex concept of emancipation in EE, involve: the dialectic of capillarity to establish EE in the institution; the material and infrastructure conditions, and the labor relations within and outside Environmental Education; The emergence of developing rigorous diagnostics in EE under pressure from the evidence of project communication; The critical and emancipatory perspective of EE and its dialogic moments. The uneasiness of an emancipation that does not materialize in its fullness generates a positive restlessness capable of promoting a critical reflection and action within this IES. Our expectation is that this research will contribute to the discussion of Environmental Education processes in HEI, so that the concept of emancipation can be revisited and added to the accumulation of knowledge regarding EE.