A political analysis of the discourse on environmental education in the Basic Education curriculum

Abstract

In this work, we bet on the notion of the discursive practices of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, to highlight certain meanings that the environmental education (EA) assumes in the school context. The aim of this article was to analyze an episode referring to the definition of AS within the curriculum from the process of production and hegemonization of environmental discourses in a basic education school. The data collection was based on the selection of excerpts from the teachers' debates around EA, analyzed in the light of discourse theory. The results of the analyses indicate that the school appears as a space in which there is the continuation of the process of political production of the curriculum and presents the atmosphere of debates, arguments and articulations of common interests that reveals the fundamentally discursive process of the meaning of EA and the possible paths in dispute for its inclusion in the curricular structure.

Keywords

• Environmental Education
• Curriculum
• Discourse Theory