Sustainability and Teacher Education: A Curriculum Study on Teacher Training Courses from Universidade Estadual do Oeste do Paraná, Brazil

Abstract

This work seeks to contribute to discussions around sustainability, in relation to formal education. One way to follow is the insertion of Environmental Education (EE) in educational institutions of all levels. This paper regards a research that had as main objective to verify the insertion of sustainability content in the undergraduate courses at the Universidade Estadual do Oeste do Parana – UNIOESTE (Western Parana State University) in order to answer to the following problematic: The teacher training courses, from UNIOESTE of the campus of Cascavel, are in a process of a curriculum environmentalization? The objectives of this research were: (i) to understand the meanings of sustainability and its variations considering the different points of view through a bibliographic research (ii) to analyze national legislation for environmental education and curricula of undergraduate courses at Unioeste through document research (iii) to interview students, teachers and coordinators through audio recordings and questionnaires in field research (iv) to identify if the courses used in this research as object of study are in a curriculum environmentalization process using as parameter the Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais (National Curriculum Guidelines - DCNs) and the Rede de Ambientalizacao Curricular do Ensino Superior (Curriculum Environmentalization on Higher Education Network - ACES). The theoretical framework seeks to understand the following themes: sustainability, sustainable development, eco-development, environment, education, environmental education, curriculum, curriculum environmentalization. The understanding of the theoretical framework guided the methodological approaches and criteria used for data collection and analysis, through the inflection of Bardin (2010) technique with Content Analysis. The results indicate a fragile teacher training regarding to environmental education and that it, by having an inter and transdisciplinary character, can permeate on any area of knowledge if the educational institutions have a commitment to become into a sustainable educator’s spaces. Given the results in this research, reflections are made about the relationships of formal education to the nature in which we belong.