Environmental education mediated from socio-cultural ecologies for the approach to territory in school contexts Educación ambiental mediada desde las ecologías sociocuturales para el abordaje del territorio en contextos escolares

Abstract

From the perspective of socio-cultural ecologies as an emerging interdisciplinary field, environmental education can be enriched in an alternative and complementary way since they allow a comprehensive approach to the dynamics of human occupation and transformations in a specific territory from a historical perspective, political and socio-cultural. This research was carried out in the territorial context of the Quindío River basin in central-western Colombia, with the participation of 144 students and 40 teachers from four public educational institutions. The methodology was a qualitative approach, where a questionnaire-type survey with open questions was used as an instrument for collecting and analyzing information to investigate socio-environmental, historical, and landscape aspects of the territorial context of said basin. The results revealed that students and teachers, in general, are unaware of the historical processes of human occupation of the region; Concerning the main changes perceived in the landscape, the students pointed out the increase in urbanizations, the decrease in green areas, and pollution; while teachers expressed changes in land use, urban growth, and development based on tourism. Undoubtedly, these findings are important as a reading of the territory to be considered in the praxis of environmental education in educational institutions.