Environmental education in the school network in the municipality of Marabá, Brazil: A case study

Abstract

Currently, humanity has been concerned with the need to preserve the environment. Such urgency triggered the need to educate man to live with the environment. Thus, environmental education emerges as a possibility for new knowledge and methodologies in an interdisciplinary perspective, presenting itself as an essential instrument for the transformation of concepts and conduct towards the environment. To understand environmental “teaching” in the network of municipal schools in Maraba in the state of Pará - Brazil, SWOT analysis was used. We use two schools as study models located in the urban and rural areas. The research was experienced with the managers and educators who work in the schools through a questionnaire with questions regarding the internal and external areas of the schools (regarding school management). We found that there is an administrative effort to provide students with projects that raise environmental awareness in schools in the areas: urban and rural. Despite the insufficient support from the government (municipal, state or federal), the difficulty that the rural school has in this work is clear, both in relation to governmental visibility, as well as the resources to acquire materials to develop socio-environmental projects. In this way the SWOT analysis proves to be a promising tool to analyse the management of environmental education in the school network where it helps educators and managers in the teaching of Environmental Education and in decision making for the functioning of the school as a whole.