Física e meio ambiente: produção e consumo racional de energia

Abstract

The production and rational consumption of energy in the teaching of Physics is related to environmental education in the sense of going beyond the classical contents studied in the classroom, thus favoring also analyze social relations in the ethical, political, economic and its relationship with the environment. With the overall objective of identifying students’ conceptions about environmental education, a didactic sequence was designed that starts from the issue of global warming, studying the greenhouse effect and relating the emission of polluting gases to the process of obtaining and consuming energy, directing to the study of power plants, which deals with energy transformations and the principle of energy conservation, as well as the classification of renewable and non-renewable energy sources. Throughout the process, the main focus was on hydroelectric plants, rational use of electricity, working on consumption issues in the various sectors of society, without losing focus on related environmental issues. Specifically, students’ conceptions, inspired by the “priori”, were analyzed in the categories of conservative, pragmatic and critical environmental education, seeking to observe a possible development for a critical conception in the dimensions of analysis. The qualitative and descriptive research consisted of the interpretation of the “messages” observed in the students’ writings as well as the recordings and annotations made by the researcher during the whole process. It was identified that the environmental issues were not part of a systematized knowledge by the students. The first manifestations on the subject were associated with news of the television media and these, in what concerns to him, had a character identified as conservative. However, it can be seen that during the process, in accordance with the intentionalities of the didactic sequence, the socio-environmental issues are present and are related to political and economic issues. Therefore, it is justified to carry out this proposal based on the assumption that the Environment, pointed as a cross-cutting theme, makes it possible to highlight Physics as an area of knowledge that enables understanding of the world, going beyond the physical and biological environment, including relations social