The Reading of the world in the source of Environmental Education

Abstract

This article addresses an experience of Environmental Education in a class of adult literacy workers of a solid waste cooperative linked to the AJA-Expansion Program of the Municipal Education Secretariat of Goiânia, capital of the State of Goiás, Brazil. It aims to present some reflections about Environmental Education in its interface with Popular Education in the context of doctoral research, ongoing in the Graduate Program in Education at the University of Brasília. It takes the principles of liberating education, Paulo Freire (2000), where “the reading of the world precedes the reading of the word” and adopts the methodology of action research, Barbier (2007), which is fruitful in transversality, in the epistemology of transdisciplinarity, using experiential pedagogical strategies that privilege sensitivity and corporeality. From the reading of the world, the environment and the work of the waste pickers, words emerged in an articulated process of literacy and environmental awareness. Thus, the challenge was posed for a Popular Environmental Education that contributes to the qualified participation of recyclable material collectors as environmental actors and critical capacity aimed at improving their living conditions.