THE INCLUSION OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN THE COURSES OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES OF PAULISTA PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES

Environmental education (EE) is considered an essential component in individual education and requires prepared professionals to deal with the issues it covers. Teacher's education courses should include the environmental dimension in their curriculum. Nevertheless, studies show that the EE in degrees occurs in an incipient way. This research aimed to analyze the inclusion of environmental issues in Biological Science teacher formation courses, at public universities in Sao Paulo. We analyzed the summaries of the disciplines in the curriculum of the courses in relation to the number of threads that refer to environmental issues. We found that the courses analyzed include the environmental dimension in the summaries of some disciplines, but in most of them, in an insignificant way. We also found that, in most cases, the disciplines are restricted to ecological aspects of environmental issues. We conclude that the investigated courses do not meet the recommendations of the legislation as regards the inclusion of the environmental dimension in the curriculum of teacher's education.