Representaciones sociales y prácticas pedagógicas en educación ambiental

Abstract

Social representations are a practical knowledge which gives meaning to the environment and sense to different practices. Knowledge of social representations in environmental education is the basis for understanding the practices of environmental educators. The research carried out had the objective of describing the representations of environmental education and the meaning of the pedagogical practices from a sample of environmental educators. It is a descriptive study, of interpretative nature, guided by the process approach to social representations. The results achieved include the observation that environmental educators provide the pedagogical practices in environmental education with a sense towards the conformation of congruent lifestyles with attitudes and values of care and respect to the environment. The research has observed the existence of social representations on environmental education and some of the implications they have in their pedagogical practices. These results confirm why social representations constitute a theory that is increasingly used to understand the common sense found in various educational actors, who can take a stand on pedagogical practice. Likewise, it contributes to interpret the relationships between representations and pedagogical practices in environmental education. Anthropocentric social representations are predominant, so that in the processes of formation and updating of educators, it would be pertinent to incorporate an inter-transdisciplinary training.