“É emergencial se conectar com a Terra”:

Educação Ambiental na formação de professores e educadores ambientais

Abstract

We are experiencing an environmental crisis that affects us not only rationally, but also emotionally. Rethinking our way of being in the world and our relationship with the Earth has become urgent and requires the involvement of education. Guided by the questions “What do we feel when facing scenes of the crisis?” and “How can we foster awareness to face it?”, this study seeks to identify how higher education students are affected by the environmental crisis and what conceptions they construct about this issue. The data were generated in a class from the elective undergraduate course Nature and Sustainability, offered at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 2023 and 2024. After a pedagogical ritual that included the screening of audiovisual material, students responded to the following questions: “How do you feel?” and “What environmental problems did you identify in the video? Are they related to the place where you live?”. Content analysis of the responses revealed the following categories: feelings, sensory perceptions and positions regarding the environmental issue, situated problems, general problems, and social and political aspects. The predominance of sadness and immobility indicates that students are affected, aware, and attentive to environmental challenges, including those present in their everyday lives. The audiovisual material evoked diverse sensations, reflections, and stances on the crisis, highlighting the potential of the aesthetic dimension in teacher education. Thus, the integration of audiovisual art in education contributes to students’ emotional and political engagement, fostering the emergence of subjectivity and agency in the face of the environmental crisis.