Environmental Education and Rural Curriculum: Guidelines from the Caguán Watershed

Abstract

This study aims to establish curriculum guidelines for environmental education (EE) in the context of the Caguán River watershed, focused on the perspectives of educators at the Santo Domingo Savio Rural Educational Institution, their teaching practices, and institutional references. A qualitative approach is adopted, based on the administration of questionnaires to teachers at different grade levels and the review of documents such as the PRAE (School Environmental Project), the environmental studies course, and lesson plans. The results revealed a fragmented curriculum that is still in its early stages of methodological development and shows limited integration with other disciplines. Convergences and gaps were identified between what the teachers stated and the reality of their pedagogical practices as reflected in the lesson plans. Nevertheless, a limited approach to problem-based learning was observed, stemming from questions related to territorial dynamics associated with the subject matter, which failed to transcend to a reflective level. Based on these elements, guidelines are proposed from a situated approach, aimed at strengthening the relationship between curriculum, context, and teaching practice, with the goal of fostering a coherent integration of environmental education (EE) into educational processes. These guidelines contribute to the curricular organization of environmental education from a contextualized perspective applicable to other educational settings. This study concludes by affirming that EE is present in schools but requires decisive actions that lead to interdisciplinarity and the mainstreaming of the environmental dimension, guided by the proposed curricular guidelines.