Critical environmental education in the initial training of chemistry teachers: understandings and learning of teachers and students.

Abstract

This research aimed to analyze which understandings and learning related to socio-environmental issues are identified by students and professors of ten undergraduate courses in chemistry at ten universities in northeastern Brazil. The research is classified as qualitative, with the use of questionnaires for data collection and the discursive textual analysis technique for data analysis. The results reveal that both professors and students approach the characteristics of the critical macrotrend of environmental education, revealing a more reflective and critical understanding of the multiple causes of socio-environmental problems. But there is still a strong presence of the characteristics of conservative and pragmatic macrotrends. Which, on the one hand, signals the commitment of universities to EE, but on the other, points to the need to promote advances in its implementation in a critical, reflective and transformative way.