Investigação da qualidade ambiental escolar para a elaboração de um Plano de Gestão Ambiental com proposições para a Educação Ambiental Uberaba

Abstract

Environmental Education (EE) is, above all, an educational process and is present in school dynamics in different ways depending mainly on the condition of the teacher, their knowledge and conceptions on the subject, their working method and their personal values. There is a tendency to develop environmental practices in schools limited to the management of water, energy, and waste. In addition, there are few broader evaluation methods, using different instruments that investigate the environmental perception and behavior of the school community, besides its environmental aspects. In this context, the present work aims to investigate the environmental quality of a basic education institution for the elaboration of an Environmental Management Plan (EMP) with proposals for EE. The first stage of the research was the creation of the Environmental Committee that accompanied the development of the entire research. The second stage, the Environmental Diagnosis, was carried out through the application of four instruments: photodiagnosis, tree survey, questionnaires to the school community (school management, pedagogical coordination, secretaries, librarians, cleaning staff, cafeteria workers, janitors, teachers, students, and surroundings), and a checklist of environmental aspects of the school (water, food, biodiversity, energy, external spaces, environmental management, and waste). From the data of the Environmental Diagnosis the EMP was elaborated, based on the Environmental Education Project implemented at the Catholic University of Brasília and on the 5W2H tool: (i) what to do; (ii) why to do it; (iii) where it will be done; (iv) when; (v) who will do it; (vi) how it will be done; (vii) how much it costs/funding. A total of 106 tree units, belonging to 30 species, were identified. According to the photodiagnosis, 50% of the analyzed areas lost vegetation and 41.66% gained it from 1992 to 2021. The photographs and the tree survey stimulated the environmental perception of the members of the Environmental Committee and provided data for the definition of actions to improve the school's green areas. Of the 32 respondents, 87.5% considered that they had a medium to high level of knowledge about EE, and all had a high level of environmental perception. By applying the checklist, the environmental aspects investigated at the school with the lowest indexes were: Environmental Management, Biodiversity, and Waste. The best indexes were found for the aspects Water and Energy. Through the questionnaires, it was possible to obtain data common to the employees and specific to the functions performed, which enriched the analysis and allowed us to make relationships with the results of the investigated environmental aspects. The speeches of the Environmental Committee were significant, legitimizing interpretations, as well as the open questions in the questionnaires that, in confrontation with some closed questions, intensified the data analysis and directed the discussions. The results also converged to propositions of practices in the intention of broadening the environmental perception of the community, which means that the EMP can influence the managerial behavior of environmental aspects and contribute to the pedagogical work of EE linked to the PPP projects. The method used in the elaboration of the school PGA, proposed here, when compared to other GA projects, shows to be a possibility instrumentalized for the development of pro-environmental behaviors, in the re-signification of values, contributing to the environmental quality of other school units.