31-01-2003
31-01-2005
Guiding school curricula towards deeper environmental knowledge and awareness requires two major reforms in education: the first consists of re-examining the official program guidelines and textbooks to make them capable of fostering transversal educational plans that promote critical forms of literacy and environmental action. The second reform concerns the promotion and assessment of the interdisciplinary processes involved in transversal integration and the learning outcomes, which should simultaneously respect the curricular objectives (what is expected from the education system) and the needs of a rapidly changing society.
As important as the structural reforms in education outlined above, are the competencies of teachers to promote them or, in their absence, to favor them through a renewed perspective on the subjects they teach. Continuous professional development for teachers in the sense of curricular transversal integration of environmental issues becomes particularly relevant. It should be seen as a complex and self-formative process in which the functional, cultural, and critical dimensions of environmental literacy, as proposed by the team (Annex 1), will support the procedures for transversal integration. Environmental literacy will, with this project, gain the indispensable school seat required to promote a deeper environmental consciousness.
Against the backdrop of the recommendations for environmental education arising from the Rio 92 meeting (Chapter 36 of Agenda 21), as well as the subsequent considerations on education and sustainability from the Thessaloniki conference (1997), and exploring the formal and thematic possibilities opened by the Basic Law of the Education System (1986), the project aims to deepen, assess, and theoretically elaborate sets of proposals transversal to the curricular programs that address different environmental issues at the micro, meso, and macro levels. These proposals, which were already created and evaluated by this team for the 1st cycle (2000/2001), will now be further developed within educational projects in schools for the 2nd and 3rd cycles during the 2001/2002 and 2002/2003 school years. One goal is also the publication of teaching materials. The process of transversal integration will be developed alongside continuous teacher training, in the form of Study Circles (records of accreditation by CCPFC/ACC - 14127/99), based on the general methodology of action-research (Annex 2) and organized according to the integration model proposed by the team (Annex 3). The formative evaluation of the project will, in this way, be partly part of the plans for training/research/action established in the context of the Study Circle and partly part of the general coordination of the project (Annex 4), which includes partner institutions (Municipality of Viana do Castelo, IPAMB, IIE, DREN).
Project Members:
Marina Prieto Teixeira Afonso de Neville e Lencastre
Rui Manuel Marcelino Brandão Leal
FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia
POCTI/CED/42610/2001
CIIE / Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação da Universidade do Porto FPCEUP - Portugal
Direcção Geral dos Assuntos Consulares e Comunidades Portuguesas DGACCP Portugal