Abstract

PEREZ MESA, María Rocío; PORRAS CONTRERAS, Yair Alexander  and  GUZMAN, Héctor Leonardo. Social representations of environmental education and the university campus. Pre-service teachers' perspective at Universidad Pedagógica Nacional. Rev. Fac. Cienc. Tecnol. [online]. 2013, n.34, pp.47-69. ISSN 0121-3814.

This research study arises because of the need to establish a field of reflection on the environmental education and training for teachers at Universidad Pedagógica Nacional. In 1972, , the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, the organizers decided to awaken people to initiate processes of environmental training led by the undergraduate programs, given the growing of environmental problems. The second attempt was made in 1985 (Bogotá-Colombia) where the seminar "Universidad y Medio Ambiente en América Latina y el Caribe" took place, in order to analyze the role of universities in the main processes followed for recognizing the environmental complexity. One of the most remarkable results of this important meeting was the development of a document called "La carta de Bogotá sobre Universidad y medio ambiente", which established in twelve points the conditions to make University more responsive to the need of incorporating the environmental dimension. In this way, the results presented here, are taken as starting point for the social representations of environmental education and the university campus of the teachers in training who belong to different programs of undergraduate courses in the main branch, located in Bogota, allow us to identify the relating practices, the meanings construction about environment and the nature of the environmental problems that emerge. These are useful representations that can bring items in the environmental culture.. This study presents the diversity of social representations and the shared visions related to the university campus, as well as their attitudes, practices and environmental proposals, in which readers can appreciate their epistemological, educational, ethical, political and environmental approaches, which reveal the importance of these findings for both teachers and students to understand the social role of teachers, and its incidence in the construction of meanings about the environmental realities in local contexts. This study has provided a renewed and invigorated focus for environmental education and education for sustainability in the university in order to analyze and solve environmental problems inside the university campus.

Keywords : social representations; environmental education; teachers' education.

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