This text seeks to present reflections resulting from a doctorate research focused on the analysis, through action-research, of school projects in environmental education developed as part of in-service teacher education, and their contributions to the constitution of new knowledges and didactic-pedagogical procedures for the study of the environment and for the exercise of citizenship. Aiming at the construction of the geo-scientific perspective at school, the environmental education projects made use of different field practices based on remote sensing (satellite images, aerial photography and maps) to (re)cover knowledge from the place of study, with the purpose of building an integrated view of the socio-environmental reality based on the establishment of dialectic relations between the local and the global as a support to the analysis of problems, of their repercussions and implications on different scales of observation. The development of the projects created the opportunity to form teacher-researchers that are innovators, critical, and reflective before the school and socio-environmental realities. Besides, it gave students the conditions to observe and know their own environment and the place where they live, to reflect upon their real situations and, based on this process, propose actions and construct educative interventions in search of solutions for the problems investigated. By incorporating the socio-environmental issue to the pedagogical practice, the school projects attempted to insert school into reality, contributing to form critical citizens that participate in joint and collaborative actions (school, community, public authorities) through social learning, aiming at the development of democratic and sustainable public policies to improve the quality of life.
Teacher education; Environmental education; School projects; Citizenship