Sustentabilidade e escola: relações entre unidades de conservação e o ensino de ciências e biologia ; Sustainability and school: relations between conservation units and sciences and biology teaching

This is a study on the dialogue between Conservation Units (in Brazil, Ucs – Unidades de Conservação) with sciences and biology teaching strengthening the school education role regarding sustainable societies. We aimed to analyze the relation between sustainability, Conservation Units (UC), and schools, focusing on the content of the sciences and biology subjects. The specific objectives included: a) to identify sustainable practices occurring in public schools, mainly those promoted by sciences and biology teachers and based on the content of these school subjects; b) to systematize teachers’ and the UC manager’s understanding of the sustainability concept; c) to analyze how the theme sustainability is approached in textbooks (in Brazil, LD – livro didático) used in state schools in the municipality of Matinhos; d) to identify the Ucs contribution to sciences and biology teaching; and e) to discuss human interactions with natural environments as a learning space toward sustainability. Data was collected using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, both applied to teachers who worked in state public schools in the municipality of Matinhos/PR and the manager of the UC called Parque Estadual do Rio da Onça, and document analysis in sciences and biology LD. The Discursive Text Analysis was employed in the data analysis and interpretation, with elaboration of categories originated in the empirical field. Our main results revealed that sustainable practices and/or activities occurring in schools most of the time follow a pragmatic conception, aiming at a hegemonic environmental education based on a view that does not link environmental problems to the capitalist mode of production. Regarding both the interviewees and the LD and considering that the latter are insufficient in the debate about sustainability, we observed the prevalence of conventional concepts. Therefore, broader reflection upon sustainability is required, one that goes beyond the reductionist view of the concept. Lessons given in Ucs provide ...