“Nature Deficit”: Contributions to the structuring of Teacher Training for Teaching with and in Nature

Abstract

Education suffers the demographic impacts of the concentration of people in urban centers. One of these impacts is the distancing of teachers and students from nature in their educational processes. The term “nature deficit” and its relationship with education has been discussed from different perspectives. This is qualitative research with a case study, whose objective is to analyze the construction of teacher training for the intentional use of an educational space in nature. The main question is: “What are the structuring elements for teacher training from a perspective of integrating nature into formal education?” This proposal was prepared by a group of teachers from the institution who met during an academic semester for a total of ten meetings of at least two hours. At each meeting, minutes were drawn up containing the main content studied; as a methodological strategy we used the Analysis Framework, creating a summary of each minutes and categories validated by the researchers. The analysis showed that the meetings were essential for preparing the proposal and the results can be observed through the categories created: the “guiding themes” involving content related to childhood and “education and nature” covering educational training activities with and in nature . We conclude that the preparation to structure this type of training demands: systematic observation of the reality in which we intend to intervene, in-depth studies on the object of training, concentrated collective effort of people who share objectives, closer ties between basic education, undergraduate and postgraduate studies. stricto sensu graduation.