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Print version ISSN 0104-4060On-line version ISSN 1984-0411

Educ. Rev. vol.37  Curitiba  2021  Epub Sep 25, 2021

https://doi.org/10.1590/0104-4060.78254 

DOSSIER - Environmental Education and Elementary and Secondary School: contexts and practices

Environmental Education in the microcontexts of curriculum production in school1

Everaldo Nunes de Farias Filho* 
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1414-3291

Carmen Roselaine de Oliveira Farias** 
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8823-7771

( Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco. Colégio Agrícola Dom Agostinho Ikas. Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil. E-mail: everaldocodai@gmail.com

** Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ensino das Ciências. Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil. E-mail: crofarias@gmail.com


ABSTRACT

This study aimed to analyze the insertion of environmental education (EE) in political microprocesses of curriculum production in two elementary schools located in Pernambuco. We took as theoretical and methodological framework the approach of the policy cycle, focusing on the context of practice. The research methodology included participant observation techniques, documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews. The results show the existence of interdependent political micro contexts that, in articulation, establish the spaces and ways of inserting environmental education in schools. Thus, we see environmental education contemplated in both schools in didactic projects associated with transversal themes and contents of curricular components based on expectations and political processes of curricular definition. Each of these contexts presents its particularities that focus on the curricular elaboration and the method of insertion of the EE in educational practices. However, a common element that appears in the results is a lack of reference to the national curricular policies of EE in the texts and school discourses, a fact that leads us to assume a certain misstep in the macro contexts of the production cycle of EE policies for basic education.

Keywords: Environmental Education; Curriculum; Elementary school; Microcontexts of curriculum production

RESUMO

Este estudo teve como objetivo analisar a inserção da educação ambiental (EA) em microprocessos políticos de produção do currículo em duas escolas de ensino fundamental localizadas em Pernambuco. Tomamos como referencial teórico-metodológico a abordagem do ciclo de políticas, com enfoque no contexto da prática. A metodologia da pesquisa incluiu técnicas de observação participante, análise documental e entrevistas semiestruturadas. Os resultados evidenciam a existência de microcontextos políticos interdependentes entre si que, em articulação, estabelecem os espaços e os modos de inserção da educação ambiental nas escolas. Desse modo, vemos a educação ambiental contemplada nas duas escolas em projetos didáticos associados a temas transversais e a conteúdos de componentes curriculares a partir das expectativas e dos processos políticos de definição curricular. Cada um desses contextos apresenta suas particularidades que incidem sobre a elaboração curricular e a forma de inserção da EA nas práticas educativas. Contudo, um elemento comum que aparece nos resultados, é falta de referência às políticas curriculares nacionais de EA nos textos e discursos escolares, fato que nos leva a supor certo descompasso nos macrocontextos do ciclo de produção de políticas de EA para a educação básica.

Palavras-chave: Educação Ambiental; Currículo; Ensino fundamental; Microcontextos de produção curricular

Introduction

We began this work2 by taking as reference the notion of social field of Pierre Bourdieu (2003) to understand the Brazilian environmental field as a scenario in which social groups, guided by distinct conceptions of the environmental problem, fight among themselves for the hegemony of the meanings concerning the environment. In its composition, the Brazilian environmental field consists of militants, movements, associations, body of experts, publications, and remains in a constant movement of coalitions and conflicts between interest groups that defend environmental discourses of different political and ideological hues, aiming to constitute an interpretative hegemony (ALONSO; COSTA; MACIEL, 2007; CARVALHO, 2008).

The research by Alonso, Costa and Maciel (2007), on the constitution of the Brazilian environmental field, and Layrargues and Lima (2011), on the macrotrends of Environmental Education (EE) in schools, bring the historical clash that persists between conservation and socio-environmental views of the environmental issue. Outside the environmental field, anti-ecologist discourses from the primary and secondary sectors of the economy mask environmental problems by disseminating the ideology of economic development above the quality of the environment (LAYRARGUES, 2017).

Thus, it is understood that the Brazilian environmental field is surrounded by a nebula3 (ACSELRAD, 2004) of distinct political-ideological currents that produce environmental discourses that merge, or even are divided, sometimes in the fight against the dismantling of the wealthy sociocultural project that marked the advancement of contemporary societies, sometimes in the incentive of market and capitalist demands. Such ideological rivalries on the environmental issue exert a direct influence on the process of construction of environmental and educational curriculum policies that reach educational institutions, reverberating in their curricula (FARIAS, 2008).

In this research, we understand the curriculum as an educational and formative process, intertwined with subjectivities and policies, resulting from the relationship and articulation between people, texts and contexts, discourses, documents, physical structures and practices that occur in the internal and external spaces of the school. Therefore, we believe that in order to understand the trajectory of environmental education in educational institutions, it is necessary to look at the school and understand how the political microprocesses of curriculum production that inserts environmental issues in its proposals and practices occur.

It is important to highlight that the objective of this article is to contribute to the field of research in EE in order to elucidate factors that affect the forms of insertion of this discipline in the curricula produced for and by schools. Consequently, influenced by the understanding that the EE is interspersed in the most diverse social and educational contexts, we decided to analyze two schools of basic education, focusing on the local political microprocesses of curriculum production.

The undertaking of this research is based on the notion that the production of curricular policies meets a cyclical principle known as the approach of the cycle of production of curricular policies, which involves three distinct and interdependent contexts, has as precursor Stephen Ball and collaborators (BOWE; BALL; GOLD, 1992) and was disseminated in Brazil by researchers in the field of curricular studies.

From this reference that addresses macro political processes, we infer the possibility of analyzing the context of the practice by this same record, however, on a local scale. Thus, we built a theoretical-methodological path that aims to understand a little more the paths of EE within the school, using the hypothesis that in this scale the contexts are reedited, or rather, the microcontexts of the production of curriculum policy. With this wager, we hope to understand a little more of the political microprocesses responsible for including or excluding EE from curriculum definitions in the contexts of practice.

The policy cycle approach

The approach of the policy cycle, formulated by Bowe, Ball and Gold (1992), is a theoretical-methodological framework of curricular policy that has contributed greatly to the field of research in this area (MAINARDES, 2006). Through this approach, the process of production of curricular policies takes place in primary political contexts, each with several arenas of action, public and private, called as context of influence, context of production of texts of political definitions and context of practice (LOPES, 2004; MAINARDES, 2006).

It is in the context of influence that political discourses circulate and where disputes occur for the definition of the social purposes of education and what it means to be educated (BOWE; BALL; GOLD, 1992). In the context of the production of the texts, the definitions of the context of influence are interpreted and materialized in official documents (LOPES, 2004; MAINARDES, 2006). In the context of the production of the texts, the ideas and discourses are translated and discussed and are subject to multiple interpretations and reinterpretations and resistance of the groups of legislators that influence the writing of the official documents of curriculum policies (MIRANDA, 2011). In this context, official educational documents are produced that arrive at schools to be read and interpreted by teachers, managers, coordinators, among others. Nevertheless, such documents do not bring in them complete and finalized solutions, on the contrary, they make room for school actors, as subjects and objects of politics, to reinterpret them enabling a multiplicity of readings (BALL, 2016).

According to Mainardes and Gandin (2013), the approach of the policy cycle assumes the school as one of the spaces for the production of meanings and the construction and reconstruction of official policies, not simply considering this as a place of implementation of policies. In this sense, Bowe, Ball and Gold (1992) conceive the school environment as a context of practice consisting of actions that take place inside and outside the classroom.

Ball, Maguire and Braun (2016) criticize the idea that politics is created only by the spheres of government (contexts of influence and the production of texts) leaving school actors out of the political process. In this sense, Ball and his collaborators defend the participation of teachers and other actors in the dynamics of continuing the construction of policies in the context of practice. According to the authors, teachers participate in the curricular production process even without realizing, when they interpret and reinterpret situations, read texts, discuss and fight to defend their points of view, modifying the ways of putting politics into practice from different interpretations (BALL; MAGUIRE; BRAUN, 2016).

Ball (1994) argues that most of the elaborate policies and decision-making have an ideological content in school institutions. Hence, such ideological differences influence teachers to act differently in relationships with each other, with students and with teaching. Thus, in the context of practice, educational actors seek to legitimize their personal interests and beliefs, or articulate themselves in groups with common ideological options, to select what will make up the curriculum at school. Consequently, the continuation of the construction of curricular policies in the school consists of political microprocesses that occur at various moments of the institution’s dynamics, driven by disputes of world views and conceptions of these educational actors.

In view of what has been discussed so far, we corroborate the idea that the school recreates, interprets and translates in its interior the primary political contexts brought by the approach of the policy cycle, reediting its functions. In this sense, based on the ideas of Stephen Ball himself presented in the works of Looney (2001), Mainardes (2006) and Mainardes and Marcondes (2009), we bet on the possibility of finding microcontexts of curriculum production inside them - on this scale called microcontexts of influence, production of texts and pedagogical practice - which operate without spatial and time delimitations and are interdependent with each other during the elaboration processes and the curriculum. With this, the EE would result from the relationships and tensions that occurred in these microcontexts and its understanding is dependent on an approach based on the school scenario. Thus, we seek to know in more detail the constitutive elements of microcontexts, their actors, discourses, meanings and artifacts elaborated locally, but not unrelated to a larger system.

We consider, then, that the approach of the policy cycle is a reference that presents epistemological bases and methodological tools to analyze the contexts of definition, formulation and practice of policies (MAINARDES, 2017, 2018). In this sense, the use of this epistemological contribution in this research considers elements present in the school, such as situated contexts, professional cultures and material and external contexts (MAINARDES, 2018) essential to understand how the process of production of the curriculum that inserts EE in these educational institutions takes place.

Methodology

Data were created by immersion in two elementary schools located in Pernambuco. For the choice of schools, two basic criteria were established a priori: the school should deliberate and develop EE practices in an institutional way, that is, as part of what is understood as the school curriculum; and their actors would need to be willing to participate in the research after being contacted and informed of the demand. Therefore, after searching for information about the profile of schools on the Internet and visiting some institutions, we encountered obstacles to the study, such as the lack of openness by some schools in allowing the monitoring of school dynamics and the discontinuity of the insertion of EE in the curriculum by changing the staff. Thus, two schools were selected because they agreed with the development of this research and allowed our insertion in the daily life of the institutions with the release of access to events, people and curricular documents.

Both schools are elementary schools and have a private legal nature4. In this article, we will call the schools searched by the fictitious names of Eureka School and Horizons School. The Eureka School is a non-profit association founded in 1979, therefore, with more than forty years of existence. It operates in the morning and afternoon shifts and serves students from various areas of the municipality and neighboring cities, offering the stages of early childhood education and elementary school to approximately 360 students. The Horizons School, also founded in 1979, offers formal education in the regular modality of early childhood education to the 5th grade of elementary school, in the morning and afternoon shifts and attends about 200 students.

For the constitution of the data in a qualitative approach, we conducted semi-structured interviews (MARCONI; LAKATOS, 2002) at different moments of the research, with managers, coordinators and teachers, seeking to know the insertion of the environmental issue in the dynamics of the school.

Participant observation (MARCONI; LAKATOS, 2002) supported the follow-up of pedagogical meetings, teacher training courses, meetings for the preparation of school curriculum documents and activities developed inside and outside the classroom. The observations provided data to analyze the hegemony relations of the discourses during the production of the curriculum present in the microcontexts that make up the practice context.

The documental analysis technique was used to analyze curricular documents produced in the school, such as pedagogical projects and materials made by teachers and students. The analysis of these documents served as a basis for understanding how the guidelines discussed and defined during group planning are interpreted by teachers and described in the writing of these texts.

Figure 1 presents the script for exploring the context of practice and the elements that characterize the production of the curriculum in school.

SOURCE: The authors.

FIGURE 1 SYSTEMATIZATION OF THE DATA CONSTITUTION PROCESS IN THE SCHOOLS SURVEYED 

Regarding ethical aspects, it is important to emphasize that we strictly follow the guidelines present in Resolution 510 of April 7, 2016 (BRASIL, 2016) of the Conselho Nacional de Saúde [National Health Council]. We take as a basis the item VII of article 1 of Resolution 510/2016 to justify the absence and registration in the Comitê de Ética em Pesquisa [Research Ethics Committee] and the Comissão Nacional de Ética em Pesquisa [National Research Ethics Commission] (CEP/CONEP), since it is a research that aims at the theoretical deepening of situations that emerged spontaneously and contingently in the schools’ professional practice surveyed and that did not reveal data that could identify the subjects of the research. However, we stress that the participants received complete information about the research and gave voluntary information, aware that they could give up at any time.

Ways of inserting EE in the context of practice

The results showed that the insertion of EE in the curriculum of the two participating schools presented origins, relationships between school actors and production paths that met in some points, however each with specificities explicit to the context of practice. Therefore, at the Eureka School, the EE is one of the pillars that sustains its pedagogical proposal, thus producing more systemic effects in the curriculum; on the other hand, in the Horizons School, the insertion of the EE was not consistently articulated to the curriculum and was based on the needs that emerged during the process of elaboration of the Projeto Político Pegagógico [Political Pedagogical Project] (PPP), determined mainly by external demand.

There is an institutionalized practice in the Eureka School of curriculum construction by its actors and external guests at different moments of discussion, from the choice of a theme to guide the annual curriculum, based on the idea of thematic reduction proposed by Freire (1987). We can verify that the posture adopted by this school for curriculum production presents characteristics pointed out by Ball, Maguire and Braun (2016), such as the active participation of teachers and other actors in the dynamics of continuing the construction of policies by the school.

At Eureka, the production of the curriculum is guided by a central theme that is subdivided into subthemes, taking into account the choices of students, teachers and school management. The content of the curricular components is articulated, when possible, to the selected themes and subthemes. It is these possible connections that bring the themes related to EE into the curriculum as a transversal theme relevant to the school.

In the case of Horizons School, the curricular construction collectively is an experience that is beginning. The participation of teachers in the elaboration of the proposals of the curricular components in this school happened with little integration of teachers and had as main motivation a continuing training course offered to teachers in service on EE, Racial Ethnic Relations and Human Rights Education. In this course, discussions were held for the elaboration of the curriculum by inserting the EE, based on a central theme that guided the pedagogical actions in the school.

Constitutive elements of the microcontexts

Our analyses show that in both schools the curriculum is produced cyclically through microcontexts that work within the context of practice. In these microcontexts, political microprocesses for curriculum construction take place, reiterating Stephen Ball’s own ideas (2009) that contexts can be “nested” within each other. In this sense, it was possible to identify some constitutive elements of microcontexts in these schools, here called microcontexts of influence, text production and pedagogical practice, as we will discuss following.

Microcontexts of influence

The microcontext of influence covers the curricular definitions that take place before or interspersed among the other microcontexts, in administrative and pedagogical meetings, continued education and informal conversations, throughout the period of the curriculum proposal operation. In preliminary planning meetings, there is the choice of central themes that articulate themes considered important by the school associated with environmental issues.

In these scenarios, the microprocesses for deliberation of the central theme are interconnected and proved to be systematized in different spheres and processes: constative, from the perception of facts and references that motivated the curricular definitions; consultative, due to the intentionality of the posture in requesting suggestions of themes to the actors of the participating institutions; deliberative, which reinforce and legitimize the choice of the central theme discussed in sync; and communicative, in order to present the proposal of the central theme for broad and collective discussion among school actors.

The deliberations and definitions on the guidelines of the curriculum that includes EE in these schools have the participation of teachers, managers, administrative and pedagogical professionals of the school and, sometimes, students and parents, as well as external members. In this dynamic, the curriculum is influenced by environmental information found in different sources used by school actors in their epistemological and methodological options on the inclusion of environmental issues in the curriculum produced at school. Thus, we found the use of specialized books and scientific articles, in addition to the news published by the media and television programs, as the main sources of information on environmental issues.

Figure 2 summarizes the main political microprocesses of curriculum production in the microcontext of influence.

SOURCE: The authors.

FIGURE 2 - POLITICAL MICROPROCESSES OF CURRICULUM PRODUCTION IN THE MICROCONTEXT OF INFLUENCE 

Microcontext of production of texts

The microcontext of the production of texts comprises pedagogical projects of the spaces of collective production, planning and lesson plans, by school actors, based on the definitions agreed in the deliberations that occurred in the microprocesses of the microcontext of influence. The microprocesses of pedagogical projects construction occurred both in pedagogical meetings and in classroom discussions. Therefore, principals, teachers, pedagogical coordination and, in one of the schools surveyed, the students participated in the elaboration of pedagogical projects. In the pedagogical proposals - which were permanently available to the school community - there was the articulation of the central theme to the environmental themes and the content of curriculum components.

The data showed different options chosen by schools for the production of pedagogical projects. The Eureka School used a methodology in which the school management was in charge of the writing of the central pedagogical project (sphere of production of programmatic text). However, the writing of the project was neither arbitrary nor imposing on the part of management, because the agreements previously defined in the microcontext of influence were considered, as we had said earlier. There was also the incentive to the construction of subprojects by teachers, with the active participation of students in the decision-making process (sphere of production of executive text), interconnected to the central theme. The practice adopted by The Horizons School was the creation of a unique pedagogical project that guide pedagogical practices. The project was collectively constructed by management and teachers (sphere of production of the programmatic text). The main political microprocesses of curriculum production present in the texts production microcontext of the two schools surveyed are summarized in Figure 3:

SOURCE: The authors.

FIGURE 3 POLITICAL MICROPROCESSES OF CURRICULUM PRODUCTION IN THE MICROCONTEXT OF THE PRODUCTION OF TEXTS 

Microcontext of the pedagogical practice

The activities carried out in classrooms, research, field classes and presentation events of students and teachers were the scenarios in which didactic-pedagogical practices were developed in the microcontext of pedagogical practice in the two participating schools. In his studies, Franco (2015, 2016) characterizes pedagogical practices as organized actions around previously established intentions, carried out with the objective of effecting pedagogical processes. The results showed that the environmental actions developed in the microcontext of pedagogical practice were connected to the content of some disciplines of the curriculum and to interdisciplinary themes.

The didactic-pedagogical practices were the result of planning that occurred at various moments of the process and constituted dialogical, participatory, inquiring and investigative practices (Figure 4). Most of the practices carried out at the Eureka School were planned during the construction of the project and pedagogical subprojects, always taking into account the definitions depending on the microcontexts of influence and production of the texts. At The Horizons School, the activities performed were conceived by the teachers as new demands emerged during the actions of the microcontext of pedagogical practice.

SOURCE: The authors.

FIGURE 4 CHARACTERISTICS OF DIDACTIC-PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES THAT INSERT EE IN THE SCHOOLS SURVEYED 

The approach of the policy cycle carries the idea of interdependence between primary political contexts in the dynamics of construction and execution of curriculum policies (BOWE; BALL; GOLD, 1992). This research corroborates the understanding that there are no delimitations between the end of a microcontext and the beginning of another in the participating schools. The deliberations on the central themes, objectives and methodologies carried out during the micro-context of influence guided the construction of the projects that guided environmental practices in the two schools.

In the dynamics of curriculum execution, however, new demands for activities and productions emerged throughout the realization of environmental practices in the microcontext of pedagogical practice in these schools. It was precisely the development of these new demands that spurred school actors to reorient some of the definitions agreed upon at previous periods, in addition to including actions not foreseen in pedagogical projects and postpone others that were not considered adequate or possible to be executed. These reinterpretations of teachers that occurred in the microcontext of the participating schools practice demonstrated the curricular definitions as contingent and precarious hegemonies that are always subject to change, as advocated by Laclau and Mouffe (2015).

Hence, the results of this research revealed that, both in the Eureka School and in the Horizons School, the political microcontexts are articulated with each other and are interdependent, constituting a cycle that feeds back, because the results of one microcontext influence the definitions and practices of the other, reediting the contexts defined by Ball and his collaborators.

The results also confirm the idea of Ball, Maguire and Braun (2016) that the curriculum is a construction that also happens in school with the participation of internal and external actors. The analysis of political microcontexts in the context of practice showed that there was no construction of a specific EE curriculum with regard to a body of premises or contents that constitute it in the schools surveyed. On the contrary, the option of the participating schools was to include EE in the curriculum from didactic projects articulated to transversal themes and curriculum contents, considering the views and experiences of school actors and the problems experienced in school with little or no explicit interference of national curricular policies of EE.

Ball (1994) considers that most of the policies elaborated in the school have an ideological content. Consequently, it is understood that ideological divergences influence the distinct performance of school actors in their relations with the curriculum in these establishments, because they consider the school as a field of struggles and conflicts. According to the author, this leads teachers to fight for interests and beliefs and articulate themselves in groups gathered by ideological groups to select what will make up the curriculum at school. In this sense, it is important to highlight that the deliberations and definitions that occurred in each microcontext in schools do not happen passively, arbitrarily or unanimously from the points of view of school actors. Quite the opposite, most of the moments of discussion of the proposals, project production, execution and evaluation of didactic-pedagogical practices, were permeated by tensions and conflicts between different views and conceptions about curriculum and insertion of environmental issues in school.

For Laclau and Mouffe (2015), the struggle for discursive hegemony takes place in a warlike scenario of negotiations between interest groups from discursive articulations. Therefore, it also seems to be in school, teachers and other school actors, with similar points of view about the environmental issue, who form alliances with each other to defend their interests through strategies of argumentation and persuasion. Thereby, the decisions that guide the curriculum in these institutions are hegemonized taking into account the views of most school actors, who unite by presenting common ideological positions.

Final considerations

The insertion of EE in the school curriculum of basic education is a theme of great importance in today’s society and requires that the community of researchers in the area seek to constitute theoretical and methodological tools that contribute to the elucidation of the paths that lead to its effectiveness as a pedagogical practice.

Some of the ideas addressed in this work have been productive to address some aspects of this issue, such as the social field (BOURDIEU, 2003) applied to the environmental field, understood as a field of forces and struggles for the hegemony of political senses, economic and social aspects of the environment. This is a heterogeneous and contradictory field, in which EE is the educational sphere that composes together with the educational field an array of hybrid meanings.

As we have argued, the insertion of EE in the curriculum is not defined as a technical issue or a simple methodological adjustment, precisely because it constitutes a sphere of ethical and political action that implies epistemological, curricular and didactic-pedagogical redirects (FARIAS, 2013). A school practice that covers environmental education requires, at a minimum, that commitments to the preparation and deliberation of the curriculum, involving teachers and the school community and the surrounding community be reviewed.

In this sense, another theoretical-methodological notion served us to guide the research trajectory, that of the production cycle of educational policies (BOWE; BALL; GOLD, 1992) as a record to understand how environmental discourses, and the very constitution of an environmental field in Brazil, begin to produce meanings associated with EE in the context of school practice. As in other school contexts, fragments of these discourses also circulate in Eureka and Horizons schools, producing hybrid influences and texts that associate the environment with pedagogical discursivities.

In fact, environmental and pedagogical discourses dispute and seek to compose hegemonies in the context of practice, in a scenario of agreements and negotiations in which the actors’ agreement and influence on the textual elaboration and pedagogical execution of curricular proposals that include EE in schools. In Ball’s (1994) line, the school is like society, a conflicting field and of ideological struggles.

The production cycle of educational policies thus provided us with the theoretical structure to investigate and reflect on the internal processes to the school, even if relations and exchanges with other contexts are maintained. The so-called context of practice became the object of reflection and, from it, we were able to recognize the presence of nested contexts, which reissue the structure already pointed out by the approach of the policy cycle, in addition to another level much more capillary and, therefore, subject to local particularities and experiences.

Based on a field work and based on the references presented, the research allowed to constitute an analysis directed to the micro policies of the school, pointing to spheres and processes of document elaboration and execution of pedagogical practices of EE. If, on the one hand, we start from a structure offered by the theoretical formulation of the production cycle of educational policies and their articulated contexts (primary contexts of influence, text production and practice), on the other hand, we were able to advance in the understanding of microcontexts and, from them, theoretically elaborate spheres that allow the recognition of the practices that constitute such secondary contexts.

Both microcontexts and their spheres and characteristics are immensely relational, which does not authorize us to make a linear and hierarchical classification. However, as a way to produce a synthesis of the findings, we can schematize the spheres and processes that constitute school microcontexts as follows:

  • the microcontext of influence presents the spheres of constative action (previous events and references), consultative (management consultations with the school community or sectors of it), deliberative (informed and qualified decision-making) and communicative (expansion and ratification of the decision);

  • the microcontext of text production involves the production processes of programmatic text, such as the writing of the pedagogical project, and the production of executive texts, which covers the planning of didactic-pedagogical actions;

  • the microcontext of the practice or development of didactic-pedagogical practices concerns the teaching action par excellence, that is, the conduction of teaching and learning practices. In this microcontext, actions in the classroom, but also outside the school, such as pedagogical visits and field classes, and events for socialization of educational work results are privileged.

Although each school presented its own path, marked by sensitive differences in internal dynamics, in both microcontexts were identified as spaces or spheres that involve a diversity of agents, processes, procedures and resources, making each field studied a vast source of particular meanings and experiences. It is precisely the existence of this diversity that should be considered when analyzing the articulation between curricular practices and policies, especially those of EE.

However, the research also indicates that there is a mistake between educational policy and context of school practice that requires attention. Both the Política Nacional de EA [National EE Policy] (BRASIL, 1999) and the Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais de Educação Ambiental - DCNEA [National Curriculum Guidelines for Environmental Education] (BRASIL, 2012), are political texts that guide the insertion of EE in the curriculum through transversal themes related to socio-environmental sustainability and the association of EE with disciplinary contents. Nevertheless, in these schools no reference was observed to such norms, since the insertion of EE in both situations was more conditioned to the subjectivities of those involved and to local power practices.

Hence, the data analysis suggests that the definitions of the insertion of EE in the curricula of the Eureka and Horizons Schools did not start from the guidelines brought by the national curriculum policies of EE, since these were not referenced during the process, at least explicitly. This fact leads us to think that, in view of the macro context of the curriculum production, the cycle of curricular policies of EE in these institutions would not have been closed, lacking the articulation between the context of influence and that of producing texts with the context of practice.

Nevertheless, EE was present in fact in the context of practice, since the environmental theme circulates in the social field in a diffused way and composes the school educational processes. On this, it is up to us to reflect on the importance of the curricular policies of EE to consider the reality and needs of educational institutions and their surroundings and, on the other hand, of reverberating the experiences of schools in the contexts of influence and production of texts, so that the experiences of inclusion of EE in institutions feedback the policy cycle. Therefore, the results of this research point to the actuality of the theme and the merit of investing in new research that are deepen the knowledge of educational policies related to EE, its modes of production and articulations with the school floor.

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1Translated by Iracema Passos. E-mail: irasteps@gmail.com

2This article derives from the research of the first author’s thesis entitled “Path of environmental education in the processes of curriculum production in the microcontexts of the school”, defended in the Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ensino de Ciências of the Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco, in 2020.

3The expression “associative nebula” was evoked for the environmentalism of France, and in the Brazilian case refers to the cleavage of discourses and practices associated with the “environmental protection” of a diverse set of organizations with different degrees of formal structuring, as well as the intra-transparency nebula that increasingly involves certain procedures of environmentalisation of these entities.

4The definition of two elementary schools and private legal nature is due to the fact that the two institutions meet the criteria already explained and admitting the development of the research.

Received: December 04, 2020; Accepted: May 05, 2021

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