THE FOOTPRINTS OF (SELF) TRAINING: A CONTINUED TRAINING PATH IN ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

This paper shows the results of an experience in collective orientation, based on (self) education in relation to others. The focus is the process of researchers' education. Narratives, written in initial stages up to current ones, are presented. It leads to the reorganization of institutionalized orientation spaces for researchers' education. Some of the arguments defended by this experience include the need to broaden spaces for in-service education and the contribution of groups undergoing collective orientation. Students in a doctoral program, who are also teachers, believe in teaching through research (Demo, 1997), in writing as a resource for education (Moraes and Galiazzi, 2007) and in narrative as self education (Josso, 2002). These beliefs, in agreement with Environmental Education, enable us to defend the need of collective work to highlight singularity and diversity. Based on the narratives written by the doctoral students and their advisor, this paper shows how each one's education has contributed to the constitution of an institutional space which has gone through changes in the light of (auto) biographical narratives in a space that transforms and (eco) educates in Environmental Education. Therefore, subjects involved in each investigative process are the authors of stories, i.e., their own story, their orientation group's one, the one written in teacher education spaces and the one about research in Environmental Education. These stories could have been disregarded as if they did not constitute a broader story. Comprehending a teacher's/researcher's constitution points out elements which reveal a specific education process (specialists/teachers); this fact leads to some ways to the organization of spaces in in-service education. Rescuing each researcher's story through narrative makes us understand the importance of one of the principles in Environmental Education: diversity. It must be present in order to generate the whole whose strength is the sum of every part; this principle must direct school events and go beyond in-service education in Environmental Education. To know these stories may contribute to think about new ways to research teacher education. It is related to the discourse in Environmental Education regarding the importance of knowing local things and their specificities in order to contribute to global knowledge. It is also supported by pre-service education processes in wheels of education and makes us believe in narrative in the class as a way to record teachers' actions.