A história de um rio: Educação Ambiental Crítica no rio Botas para o aprendizado de biologia/meio ambiente no ensino médio utilizando o recurso diário virtual ou blog

Abstract

The present study analyzes the possibilities of critical environmental education, at the school level, as a theoretical methodological guidance for new social practices and technical development of skills and abilities proposed for the area of Biology in high school. To promote active learning, it is necessary to go beyond mere memorization of content. Therefore, we sought to contextualize the socio-environmental issues involved in the degradation process of the Botas River, located in the municipality of Nova Iguaçu and close to the school. The final product of the work is a blog containing the entire process developed and based on the mapping of this river, in addition to a didactic script, for teachers, which aims to provide guidance and support for the reproduction of the didactic sequence adopted in the development of the critical perception in environmental education. From there, its history is briefly described, describing and critically analyzing the processes that generated the degradation of this water resource. In this way, students are encouraged to be able to associate their own history and that of the city that surrounds them, in order to recognize a picture of environmental injustice and thus contribute to claim their recovery. The activities allow students to develop different socio-environmental perceptions, where we observe the cognitive and socio-emotional development of the participants, through the strategies adopted with different media and resources from photography, blog, HQ and as field classes. In field activities, we compare the characteristics of the river in an urban environment, the Botas River, degraded and silted and a river in a natural environment, the Dona Eugênia River, which crosses the Nova Iguaçu Municipal Natural Park. The final product, the Blog, entitled Pegadas, and the didactic script, aim to offer a learning strategy and knowledge mediation, stimulating teacher-student involvement and awakening the student's interest for scientific knowledge in a collective and participatory way through the study of the Baixada Fluminense rivers. The problematization of the local reality is present in several details of the didactic script and the elaborated blog. The strategy of approaching the reality of the students based on the discussion of their locality and the scenario of environmental injustice they were experiencing brought greater interest to the work and fostered the protagonism of the students.