FROM ANTHROPOCENTRISM TO ECOCENTRISM: THE “RIVERS PROJECT” IN THE CHANGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDES

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14571/brajets.v13.n1.66-78

Abstract

In a society where anthropocentrism prevails in relation to ecocentrism, it is important to focus on didactic strategies that lead to the change of attitudes toward an ecocentric vision of the world. The Rivers Project is an Iberian project of public participation in action in our country for 12 years and uses an effective methodology for changing environmental attitudes in children in the first years of schooling. The present study aimed to assess the influence of the Rivers Project on the change of anthropocentric vision for an ecocentric vision in children of the primary school. For this, a questionnaire with open and closed questions was applied to two groups of the 4th year of primary school in the city of Bragança, namely a focus group (121 students) and a control group (33 students). The questionnaire was applied to the focus group before and after an educational intervention (pre and post-test), namely two field trips within the Rivers Project, and the control group in the same time periods, with students who did not make this field trips to the river. The question concerning the purpose of this communication was the drawing up of a drawing that mirrored its representation of a river and its banks. The resulting drawings were analyzed and categorized and were subsequently checked for statistically significant changes through the Wilcoxon test between pre and post-test in both groups. The results show that changes occurred in the focal group. The majority of the children went from an anthropocentric vision to an ecocentric vision after leaving the Rivers Project, thus evidencing the effectiveness of this Project in changing environmental attitudes.

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2020-04-12

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Vol. 13 No. 1 (2020)

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