Environmental Education and Complexity A Study Based on Brazilian Theses and Dissertations

• Published in: Science & education Vol. 31; no. 1; pp. 1 - 20
• Main Authors: Pereira, Brenda Braga, Silva, Luciano Fernandes, dos Santos, Janaina Roberta
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.02.2022; Springer
• Subjects: Difficulty Level; Discourse Analysis; Doctoral Dissertations; Education; Environmental Education; Foreign Countries; History; Philosophy of Science; Science Education; Systems Approach; Theses; Brazil
• ISSN: 0926-7220; 1573-1901
• DOI: 10.1007/s11191-021-00228-9

The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze meanings that the term complexity assumes in Brazilian theses and dissertations in the field of environmental education, especially when addressing socio-environmental issues. The studies were selected from the database Theses and Dissertations of EArte ( http://earte.net/ ), which is a repository for Brazilian theses and dissertations in the field of environmental education. Twenty theses and dissertations were selected to compose the documental corpus of this investigation. For the investigation, content analysis was used. Three a priori categories were defined to analyze the meanings of Complexity: (1) complex thinking: organized from Morin’s ideas of Dialogical Principle, Organizational Recursion Principle, Holographic Principle, and Scienza Nuova ; (2) complex systems: organized from uncertainty, dynamics, and open systems groupings; and (3) complexification organized from the environmental complexity grouping. The complex thinking category was the most frequent in the analyses, identified in fifteen of the twenty theses and dissertations. In twelve of the twenty dissertations, the category of complex systems was identified, while in four of the twenty, the category complexification was referenced. These studies show a greater inclination towards the ideas of Edgar Morin and Enrique Leff.