The PhD Defence in Education Sciences of candidate Carla Santos, will take place at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Porto (FPCEUP) on 06 December 2023, at 10.00am. The thesis,  “Educação para desenvolvimento sustentável: entre o dizer e o fazer” was developed under the supervision of Rui Trindade, Associate Professor of FPCEUP member of CIIE and Clara Vasconcelos Associate Professor of FPCEUP.

The session is open to the public

Evaluation panel:
Chair:  Fátima Pereira, Full Professor of FPCEUP

Members:
Teresa Vilaça, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Education of the University of Minho 

Carlos Ferreira Assistant Professor University of Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro

Alcina Figueiroa, Coordinating Professor at the Piaget Institute in Vila Nova de Gaia

Isabel Menezes, Full Professor FPCEUP

Rui Trindade, Associate Professor  FPCEUP - supervisor.

Preciosa Fernandes, Associate Professor  FPCEUP

ABSTRACT:
The desire for a prosperous, socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable, world puts us at the heart of concerns about Sustainable Development. In these times of change in a global and interconnected society (J. D. Sachs, 2017) the school has been required to reconfigure for better reflection and responsiveness to current demands. Without the perspective of another world where we can live, Education for Sustainable Development asserts itself as an emerging curricular theme.
It is from two domains, the domain of conceptualization and the domain of operationalization, that we organize this study, to analyse ESD conceptions that are evident in the Portuguese educational system and in national schools, both through some of its structuring documents and through of the discourses of professors involved in projects related to this domain.
For this, we decided to carry out our exploratory case study based on three interconnected operations: (i) analysis of the Reference for Environmental Education for Sustainability (REApS) which constitutes a support for activities in the fields of Environmental Education and Sustainable Development which are part of the proposed plan in the area and subject of «Citizenship and Development»; (ii) school textbooks available on the market to support initiatives in this discipline at the level of the high school and (iii) interviews with thirteen teachers who develop projects recognized by themselves as likely to be included in the field of ESD.
This study allowed us to verify that ESD in Portuguese schools is a domain that is subordinated to Environmental Education. Although it is assumed that the domain of SD is transversal in schools, the analysis of the testimonies of teachers interviewed shows that we are facing peripheral initiatives that can be explained by militancy and teacher availability. It is believed that both the fact that we are facing initiatives circumscribed, to a large extent, to Environmental Education, and peripheral, within the scope of the set of curricular options that are assumed in schools, can also be explained by the existence of a conceptually weak reflection on the ESD and its formative implications.