Reflections on climate change communication and environmental care: the teachers' view in the school context¹

ABSTRACT

It is of utmost necessity to reflect on climate changes (CC). This human-environmental problem is global and with concrete projections of future intensification, directly associating with the need to promote sustainability. Thus, this study had as its purpose to comprehend the understanding held by teachers about CC communication in schools, specifically investigating how their school context addresses CC and environmental care (EC) to the students and how they see their students standing over these issues. Efforts like these are of extreme relevance, as one considers that these students will be future adults who will more strongly suffer the consequences of CC. The school becomes a fertile ground to discuss, stimulate and implement pro-sustainability actions of care and mitigation. Exploratory interviews with 11 teachers were carried out in both public and private schools. In summary, the teachers positively saw the student as willing to a pro-ecological engagement, highlighting the most needed family participation, the continuity of the projects, and the promotion of experiments with the local reality as means to stimulate behaviors and the building of beliefs, attitudes, and visions linked to the principles of sustainability. Such results provide a basis for the schools to (re)build projects of socio-environmental education, which take into account psychological dimensions that enable sustainable lifestyles, also considering global environmental issues.

Keywords:
climate change; environmental care; environmental psychology; teachers; school context.