Aprendendo com as águas: pedagogia urbana das águas na Bacia do Cercadinho

Abstract

It is urgent to build alternatives for urban resilience because of the frequency of environmental disasters involving water in Brazilian cities, such as floods and landslides, caused mainly by an urbanization logic that neglects the natural dynamics of water. This research begins understanding that the reversal of this situation must include, in addition to the formulation of public policies and the development of sustainable techniques, the democratization of knowledge about urban waters, since building a better relationship with water in the city is a collective task. The research is associated with the Águas na Cidade (AnC) extension project, created in 2015 and promoted by the MOM/EA-UFMG research group, which, upon realizing that the general population is unaware of the concrete manifestations of water in the urban environment, develops educational materials and actions to expand this knowledge. From this perspective, the main objective of the research presented here is to delimit which urban water pedagogical project we need to make cities more resilient. Covering a review of the literature in the area of pedagogy and the environment, the thesis presents the problem of the relationship between water and urbanization, focusing on the Córrego Cercadinho Basin, an urbanized watershed located in the western administrative region of Belo Horizonte city, in Minas Gerais state, Brazil. The experiences of urban water pedagogy were developed in virtual meetings with the Escola Estadual Manuel Casasanta (EEMC) (high school), and with classes from the integrated school of the Escola Municipal Professora Efigênia Vidigal (EMPEV) (elementary education), both located in the Basin of Cercadinho, are presented, among other specific actions in conjunction with the AnC project. Therefore, the thesis discusses how this research opened a panorama to reflect “how to do” this pedagogy, a methodological knowledge, from the materials, practices, approaches and didactic sequences adopted in the reported experiences. In conclusion, it is pointed out that learning with the waters, having the primary school as a privileged stage, may be the key to thinking not only about the democratic construction of urban resilience, but processes of environmental recovery and reconciliation with nature of the scale microlocal to planetary.