Environmental Education and Literary Reading: A strategic pedagogical approach to the teaching-learning process

: Right to be observed in the educational process and especially in basic education, Environmental Education is a transversal theme to the school curriculum that requires specific teaching methodologies. Based on this assumption, the present study aimed to investigate the use of literary reading mediation in the pedagogical making to the teaching of Environmental Education in the classroom, even because literature is also a basic right and a formative and informative tool. This is a bibliographic research of qualitative approach and exploratory purpose, which made use of narrative review through the technique of Thematic Analysis of Braun and Clarke (2006). As a result, it was verified that, besides constituting recognized basic rights, Environmental Education and Literature can intersect for the instrumentalization of a cohesive teaching-learning process aimed at human, social, political and emancipatory formation, which meets the principles and objectives legally provided for such a transversal field of education.


INTRODUCTION
An integral part of a broad educational process, Environmental Education is provided by Law 9,795/99 as a right, an essential component to be contemplated in all levels and modalities of the educational process, in formal and non-formal character (BRAZIL, 1999).And, in the same line, according to the National Curricular Parameters and Guidelines, it constitutes a transversal theme to be contemplated notably in the school curriculum of Basic Education (Child Education, Elementary and Secondary Schools).
However, more than a mere legislative provision, we know that environmental education is essentially a political and formative education, aimed at the development of the individual as a citizen and member of a whole, of which he/she is also co-responsible for the preservation.For this very reason, in order to meet its proposed goals, the teaching of Environmental Education needs a purposeful pedagogical practice that uses methodological strategies other than the traditional expositive method.
Literature, in turn, like Environmental Education, is today recognized as a basic human right; and, in the case of children's literature, more than an instrument aimed at delight, enchantment and fantasy, it constitutes a valuable pedagogical resource for the critical formation of subjects.Just like Environmental Education, reading literature is also emancipatory and invites protagonism.
In view of this, understanding Environmental Education and Literature as basic human rights, we delineated the following research question: To what extent can the correlation between Environmental Education and literary reading contribute to the teaching-learning process at school?Thus, this study aimed to investigate the use of literary reading as a pedagogical tool in the teaching and learning processes in Basic Education.To do so, it was necessary to understand Environmental Education and Literature as necessary rights for human, social, political, and emancipatory formation; discuss the need to use different methodologies to teach Environmental Education; and, finally, verify the didactic-pedagogical possibilities of using literary reading to teach Environmental Education.
We consider the discussion pertinent because of the need for the school, as a regular teaching space, to form subjects aware of their role and responsibility to the preservation of an ecologically balanced environment.More than that, in addition to the lack of other studies of the same nature, we justify the research by integrating a thematic approach of cross-cutting axis of education to the teaching in the classroom.

THEORETICAL FOUNDATION
Environmental Education as political education RIMA, v.5, n.1, 2023, e202.Although it initially emerged in response to the mismatch established between the consumer society and the recomposition of ecosystems, we know that today Environmental Education is fundamentally a political education (REIGOTA, 2017).Not that ecology and sustainability have been left aside, but, over time, it has been realized that environmental education goes beyond the pragmatic teaching of these.
Starting from the assumption that, since man is essentially political, education must also be (FREIRE, 2001), Environmental Education is political in the sense that it is committed to the development of autonomy, critical thinking, and emancipation of the subject.
Environmental education is political in the sense that it seeks to promote the individual's development to the point that he/she realizes that, as a species that is part of a larger whole (called ecosystem), he/she needs to respect and preserve it, thus exercising his/her role as a citizen and active subject of the historical process.
We know that, for the transformation of the community in which we live, of the world we live in, it is first necessary to promote the emancipation of the human being individually considered, which can only happen, of course, from an autonomous awareness, favored by a cohesive and liberating educational process.For this reason, adopting the Freirean perspective, "Environmental Education is a critical and emancipatory dimension of education" (COSTA; VENIAL, 2021, p. 147).
Of course, far from being the panacea for all ills, Environmental Education alone can't account for all existing environmental problems, but it is indisputable that it "can decisively influence it when forming citizens aware of their rights and duties" (REIGOTA, p. 8).

Background of Environmental Education
We can say that Environmental Education is a contemporary practice, only recently having assumed the status of autonomous discipline and awakened to the State the attention due (COSTA; VENIAL, 2021).In the context of the nascent ecological movements of the 1960s is that the term was first presented at the Keele University Education Conference, in Britain.
Studies point as the great milestone to the internationalization of Environmental Education the Declaration on the Human Environment 1 , issued in response to the report "The limits of growth" RIMA, v.5, n.1, 2023, e202.
(published by the Club of Rome2 in 1972) and proclaimed at the 1972 Stockholm Conference (HOLMER, 2020).And yet, that Environmental Education was only considered transversal subject to the educational process already in the 1970s, at the Conference on Environmental Education for Secondary Education held in Peru in 1976 (FELIPE, 2012) and the Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education, held in Tbilisi (former Soviet Union) in 1977 (HOLMER, 2020).The fact is that it was in the context of important international meetings and diplomatic acts such as those mentioned that the international community as a whole awakened to the urgency of the subject (COSTA; VENIAL, 2021).
In of Brazil to this discipline, fostering the development of programs and actions specific to the educational practice itself.
Law 9,075/1999 states that everyone has the right to Environmental Education (art.3), a component of national education that must be present and articulated at all levels and modalities of the educational process, both formal and non-formal (art. 2 c/c art.9).Besides this, the law expressly foresees in its Art. 1 that:, Environmental education is understood as the processes by which the individual and the community build social values, knowledge, skills, attitudes and competences aimed at the conservation of the environment, an asset for common use by the people, essential to a healthy quality of life and its sustainability (BRASIL, 1999, our emphasis).
Such legal provisions, in fact, lead us to understand that Environmental Education is the right of all and meet what is expressly provided for in the Federal Constitution of 1988 in Article 225, item VI, to establish that, to ensure the effectiveness of the right to an ecologically balanced environment, the Public Power is responsible for "promoting environmental education at all levels of education" (BRAZIL, 1998, our emphasis).
A particular issue also to be noted is that Law 9,795/1999 itself specifies that, in the context of formal education, Environmental Education should not be implemented as a specific curricular component, but should be "developed as an integrated, continuous and permanent educational practice at all levels and modalities of formal education" (art.10, § 1st).
In this sense, in the case of Basic Education (Kindergarten, Elementary and Secondary Education), also the guiding documents of recent decades lead to the understanding that Environmental Education is a transversal theme to be contemplated in the school curriculum in the classroom.
As Branco, Royer, and Godoy Branco (2018) point out, in the National Curriculum Parameters (PCN's) Environmental Education is provided for in the volumes of Natural Sciences, Environment, and Cross-Cutting Themes, always highlighting the interdisciplinary and integrative perspective of working on the theme in Basic Education.And, in the same sense of transversality, the National Curriculum Guidelines (DCN's) also guide that: For students to constitute a vision of globality and understand the environment in all its dimensions, the pedagogical practice of Environmental Education must have a complex and interdisciplinary approach.Hence the unusual task, but to be pursued, of institutional structuring of the school and curriculum organization that, through transversality, overcomes the RIMA, v.5, n.1, 2023, e202.fragmented view of knowledge and broaden the horizons of each area of knowledge (BRAZIL, 2013, p. 543, emphasis added).
While the Common National Curricular Base (BNCC) does not even bring the term Environmental Education, being only possible to understand that indirectly is cited when it provides for the development of "certain skills and essential learning" (BRANCO; ROYER; GODOY BRANCO, 2018BRANCO, , p. 1999)).
With that, in view of the specificities presented, we must understand that the teaching of Environmental Education in school spaces requires specific methodological strategies, pedagogical tools that correspond to the integrative, interdisciplinary and transversal character that demands.

Literature as a right and Literary Reading as a methodological strategy for Environmental Education
Reigota (2017) clarifies that there are many methods to the mediation of Environmental Education, being inadvisable for the teacher to remain stuck in the traditional expository lessons.The scholar points out that, aiming to integrate the subject to the solution of concrete problems, Environmental Education has a greater affection for the so-called participatory methodologies, including the methodological strategies of life stories and project pedagogy.
In this sense, in addition to such possibilities, we discuss in this paper the use of literature as a methodological tool to do pedagogical teaching of Environmental Education in the classroom.
Although not foreseen in law as Environmental Education, within the universe of Human Rights, literature is also a basic right of the individual.And Cândido (2012, p. 7, our emphasis), in this sense, states Literature corresponds to a universal need that must be satisfied under penalty of mutilating the personality, because by the fact of giving form to the feelings and the vision of the world it organizes us, frees us from chaos and, therefore, humanizes us.To deny the enjoyment of literature is to mutilate our humanity.
We know, in fact, that literature has a formative and informative character, constitutes "a powerful instrument of instruction and education, entering curricula, being proposed to each one as intellectual and affective equipment" (CÂNDIDO, 2012, p. 19).Literary narratives, then, make it possible to establish dialogical relations with real problems and situations that come between us.And, in our perspective, it is exactly in this sense that literary reading can contribute a lot to the teaching of Environmental Education.RIMA, v.5, n.1, 2023, e202.
Literary reading is taken as a communicative resource that demands a response from the reader, leading him/her to verify the different and varied aspects of the narrative, happening through the interaction between the reader, his/her questions and the reality that is presented (COSSON, 2020).This is because literature enables subjects to get to know the world through words and, consequently, also to intervene in it.
For literary reading to be used as a resource to promote Environmental Education at school we need to understand the importance of reading literature in the classroom.The act of reading itself provides the reader with a human, critical-reflective and transforming formation, enabling the expansion of knowledge of the world around him; after all, reading is a social practice (BENEVIDES, 2008).The pedagogical work with the literary text enhances the subject's ability to interpret, understand, know and investigate different realities, and for this very reason it is favorable to the teaching of Environmental Education.
Thus, we believe that the practice of literary reading in the school space is a guiding mechanism for textual assimilation and understanding, and this will depend mainly on how it is mediated.Literary reading must be intentional, and to promote a successful reading experience, the teacher needs to "explore to the maximum, with his students, the potentialities of this type of text" (COSSON, 2020, p. 29).
The literary text should not be presented in the school context as a mere facilitator of curriculum content or only to decontextualized grammatical work, but should be seen as an expensive resource to problematize real situations and encourage the taste and pleasure for literature (VILLARDI, 1999), which can greatly contribute to the work of cross-cutting themes such as Environmental Education.
At this point of the discussion, then, we are urged to address the methodological possibilities of literary reading mediation aimed at teaching Environmental Education.About the different mechanisms for working with literature, Cosson (2020) highlights three essential moments in the development of reading: pre-reading (prepares the reader for an effective contact with the text), the effective reading itself (the reading and textual understanding) and interpretation (the materialization of the text read in real life).
And in the same vein, Graves and Graves (1995) emphasize the importance of scaffolded reading, a strategy that, besides fostering taste and pleasure at the moment of reading, seeks the promotion of a successful reading experience.For the authors, reading by scaffolding takes place in two phases: planning and implementation.
In planning, the mediator analyzes the interests and needs of the subjects (what genre does my student like?What does my student need to learn?).From this reflection it is possible to choose the RIMA, v.5, n.1, 2023, e202.literary text to be mediated, to analyze the concepts that are still unknown to the students, and also to delimit the purposes to be achieved with the reading.
While the implementation phase of scaffolded reading consists of three stages: pre-reading (motivating the listener/reader, working with prior knowledge, socializing specific concepts and vocabulary still unknown to the students), during reading (effective reading of the text through guided reading, oral reading, silent reading, or storytelling), and post-reading (a moment to synthesize the information assimilated from the text that can happen through a conversation circle, a retelling, an artistic activity, among other possibilities).
We need to understand that, when working with social and political issues, such as the crosscutting theme of Environmental Education in the classroom, literary reading cannot happen in isolation, but requires that we make use of methodological strategies for reading mediation such as those exposed.

METHODOLOGY Methodological aspects
More than a set of techniques, we know that the methodology and procedures used to investigate a specific phenomenon constitute a process of construction and movement of human thought to deprehend social reality (GONSALVES, 2001).
In terms of classification, according to Gil (2008) and Prodanov and Freitas (2013), using the literature review technique, the present study is a bibliographic type research with a qualitative approach and exploratory purpose.
The literature review was of the narrative type and carried out with the CAPES Periodical Portal and Scielo Library.As search filters, we concomitantly applied the descriptors "environmental education", "literature" and "school", also using the decennial chronological criterion of inclusion (2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018)(2019)(2020)(2021)(2022), since the DCN's for Environmental Education date from the year 2012.Reading was then carried out to select the manuscripts correlated to our research object.
To infer the constructed data, we used the thematic analysis technique 6 , which according to Braun and Clarke (2006 apud ROSA;MACKEDANZ, 2021, p.11) is "a method that works both to reflect reality and to unravel or unveil the surface of reality".
In the stage of naming and defining the themes, we identified three distinct cores of meaning: formative and informative nature of literature; use of project pedagogy; mediation of popular and local 6 Thematic analysis consists of six stages: familiarization with the data (repeated reading of the data), generation of initial codes (identification of semantic content); search for themes (grouping of coded data); review of themes (review of coded extracts); definition and naming of themes (identification of the nuclei of meaning); and, production of the report (final analysis).RIMA, v.5, n.1, 2023, e202.literature in the formal school space.In the analysis itself, based on the nuclei of meaning identified, we verified the didactic-pedagogical possibilities of the use of literary reading in the teaching of Environmental Education.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
From the findings from the search in the CAPES and Scielo journals, 50 (fifty) manuscripts were found.From careful reading of the abstracts of scientific productions, we noticed that only 6 (six) of them dealt specifically with the use of literature in the teaching of Environmental Education in school spaces, which we bring in Table 1 below.Despite the decennial filter applied, all articles dated from the last 08 (eight) years and, for the most part, turned to the work of Environmental Education in Basic Education.
The Santos The pedagogical intervention of the authors was motivated by working the life cycle of the butterfly and made use of the works "Blue Butterfly", by Lenira Heck and "Romeo and Juliet", by Ruth Rocha.From an interdisciplinary perspective, the interveners brought to the classroom the themes of ecological balance and current environmental crisis.
The production of Hoffmann ( 2018) is also the result of a project developed with students of the final years of elementary school in a public school with the purpose of discussing environmental issues RIMA, v.5, n.1, 2023, e202.
The results converge to the success of the approach Environmental Education -literary reading for the formation of individuals aware of themselves, of the environment they are part of, of the depletion of natural resources and of their responsibilities to preserve the environment.They made it possible to observe that literary mediation is a relevant participatory methodology, especially if linked to the pedagogy of projects, didactic sequence or any other form of organization of the teaching-learning process.And, furthermore, that in relation to the existence of literary works focused on the environmental issue, there are countless possibilities, in the most diverse types and textual genres.
We conclude, finally, that to bring literary reading closer to the teaching of Environmental Education is to meet the basic principles and fundamental objectives foreseen for this by Law 9,075/1999.
And we state this considering that such strategy favors a pedagogical approach of "humanistic, holistic, democratic and participatory" (art.4, Subparagraph I), focused on the "development of an integrated understanding of the environment" (art.5, Subparagraph I), concerned with the "stimulus and strengthening of a critical consciousness about environmental issues" (art.5, Subparagraph III) and with the "encouragement of individual and collective participation in preserving the balance of the environment" (art.5, Subparagraph IV).
the case of Brazil, although the country has participated in the Stockholm Conference in 1972 and implemented the so-called National Environmental Policy by Law Nº 6,983/1981, only later Environmental Education had legal foresight, almost in the early 2000s with the advent of law 9,795/1999.Environmental education as a right and a transversal theme of the formal curriculum Henriques et al (2007) states that in Brazil, Environmental Education emerged even before it was institutionalized by the federal government.Nevertheless, we understand that the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (ECO 92) 3 , held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and also the Workshop on Environmental Education, organized on the same date by the Ministry of Education (MEC), were factors that weighed in favor of the legal provision of Environmental Education.The former, among other fruits, resulted in the Treaty on Environmental Education for Sustainable Societies and Global Responsibility 4 and this one, for bringing up the Brazilian Charter for Environmental Education 5 .The fact is that the National Policy for Environmental Education and other provisions, only the advent of Law 9,075/1999 and its subsequent regulation by Decree Nº 4,281 in fact showed the opening RIMA, v.5, n.1, 2023, e202.

TABLE 01 :
Results of the literature review performed in the Capes and Scielo journals.