Methodologies and educational resources to foster ecological culture and climate awareness at school

Abstract

Tackling environmental impact requires a prompt response. The school is situated as the suitable space to encourage practices which promote citizen participation and a change of habits. The objective of this research is to analyze the social discourse of educational agents in order to identify the properties and characteristics of methodologies and educational resources which allow the development of meaningful learning oriented to sustainability. The qualitative methodological design is based on discourse analysis and applies Grounded Theory and structured techniques. Through a validated questionnaire, focus groups and semi-structured interviews were carried out with 53 agents of the educational community, including technicians and managers, trainers of trainers, teachers, and researchers from the Spanish educational field. By means of selective coding, co-occurrence analysis and the diagramming technique, 120 codes and 14 central categories were identified to provide guidelines on how to approach the methodological design and the selection of resources to develop an Environmental Education for Sustainability (ESE) at school. The results of the study reveal the importance of integrating active methodologies and contextualized resources that place the school at the epicenter of the social life of its immediate environment.