The analyses of media images and environmental education: a contribution to teachers' training

Abstract

This qualitative research was aimed at studying the images regarding environ mental issues on the front cover of popular magazines. The main objectives were to identify the conceptions of environmental issues portrayed in the images and under stand how teachers under training interpreted, revalued and kept the messages therein. The analysis of the images led to a dominantly pragmatic and anthropocentric concep tion of the environmental issue. The images interpretation in teacher training courses was performed from a critical point of view of the environmental education. Based on these results, we believe that the interpretative process of the images in graduation and further education courses, as well as at elementary schools, could provide another tool to contribute to the achievement of citizenship, developing less naive and more critical observers in the face the images they are exposed to throughout their daily lives, espe cially images concerning environmental issues.

Images; Environmental Issues; Teacher Training Courses