Interpretive Trails for Public Use in Parks: Challenges for Environmental Education

Abstract

Environmental Education is a dimension of public use in protected areas foreseen for all management categories of the National System of Protected Areas. In this context, Conservation Units need to gain meaning for society and can serve as a locus of actions for the consolidation of Environmental Education Policy. These have the potential to reconnect people from the natural environment with affectivity and reflection and to allow a practical and critical view of society's relations with nature. In addition, Environmental Education, while a social practice can contribute to foster participatory and democratic integration in decisions about its management. The present work aims at the elaboration of Interpretive Trails as pedagogical proposal and Environmental Education tool, based on the activities of environmental awareness and interpretation. Through several stages and based on social research methodology, the work analyzes the elaboration of different interpretative trails made by CIEP-449 Governador Leonel de Moura Brizola Brazil-França high school students, located in Niterói, RJ, in partnership with the Environmental Interdisciplinary Studies Group, of the Rio de Janeiro University. At the first moment of the research, the tracks were divided into different themes, obeying the pedagogical proposal and the curricular base of the school. From the second moment, the work follows with the discussion and elaboration of a new interpretative trail, based on the trails made by the students. The new IT is of the guided type and has a pedagogical approach that seeks interdisciplinarity. The area of ​​study of the research is the trail of Costão de Itacoatiara, inserted in the State Park of Serra da Tiririca, in a neighborhood next to the CIEP. The social context of the class, the different aspects of environmental education and the conflicts involving the Protected Areas were central discussions in this work, as well as the approach of the concepts of environmental interpretation and interpretive trails. With the result, it is possible to analyze the use of interpretive trails in the planning and management of public use in the parks and to verify its effectiveness with conservation strategy and as a pedagogical proposal, based on the sensitization and construction of a critical thinking about socio-environmental issues, minimization of negative impacts of visitation and involvement of students in biodiversity conservation, as well as helping them in the teaching-learning process.