Implementation of a nursery and production of native Cerrado seedlings as an Environmental Education strategy

Abstract

Environmental Education is a continuous and permanent process, which comprises educational actions for the formation of citizens related to the preservation and conservation of the environment. The environmental theme is increasingly relevant in school spaces, a good instrument for developing educational activities at school is the nursery, as it is capable of developing theoretical and practical awareness about environmental issues. From this, it is speculated how the production of Native Seedlings in a nursery will contribute to the critical-environmental training of students at a public school? The objective of this work was to build, in a participatory way, a seedling nursery with production of native species from the Cerrado within a school, aiming to promote learning and reflections that bring a critical look on issues relevant to Environmental Education, in addition to promoting and encourage afforestation in the community. The project was implemented in a school in the city of Luís Eduardo Magalhães, Bahia. The development of action research was carried out with 32 students and two science teachers. Questionnaires were applied, the nursery was set up and the logbook was written. When analyzing the students' environmental perception in the questionnaires, it was noticed that they did not have much understanding of the concepts related to the environment, lacking critical sense and argumentation. After carrying out the activities, there was an increase in the students' sense of reflection on environmental issues. Altogether 539 native seedlings from the Cerrado were produced for planting and distribution in the community. Ipe and tamboril were the species that obtained the highest amount of healthy seedlings, a total of 83 seedlings each. And the buriti was the species that achieved the least amount of healthy seedlings, only 16. It was concluded that the Environmental Education activities were of fundamental importance for the learning of the participating students, because through the practical knowledge acquired in the nursery, the sense can be improved criticism from participants about content related to environmental issues.