Enhancing Ecocentric Environmental Attitudes: An Experience of Science Teaching to Inspire Students to Value Trees

Abstract

Abstract Deforestation is a global issue. Education has a fundamental role to play in this context. In this regard, the direction and effectiveness of educational practices should focus on the empowerment of students in ecocentric environmental attitudes. A key point in education for environmental sustainability is pedagogical approaches focused on the development of critical and reflective thinking. In this context, objectified research was developed in the (re)conceptualization of the “living being”, with thermogram didacticization, as a way to develop egalitarian feelings of the need for similar attitudes among living beings. The study was developed in an action-research context. The pedagogical-didactic intervention was within the scope of the “Natural Sciences” curricular unit of the “Basic Education” degree at a Portuguese Institution. After a pedagogical-didactic intervention, the reconceptualization of “living being” was observed in these students, presenting, now, a reflexive argument concerning the ecocentric environmental attitudes regarding the “living being” – the tree vs. animal, highlighting the importance that the thermographic images had in the (re)significance of their “new look” regarding the tree.