a educação para os valores ambientais no Museu da Água da EPAL

Tese de mestrado, Educação artística, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Belas Artes, 2011The present enquiry aims at making a reflection over the role of museums while educators for the values and more concretely of its importance in regards to the environmental and citizenship values. For this, we will be presenting the case study of the Water Museum of Empresa Portuguesa das Águas Livres (EPAL), through the analysis of its dynamic with schools and more specifically through the analysis of the materials produced by the students in the annual competition promoted by this institution. Culture, family, religion and the society in general where the individual is inserted, all these factors are influences to the values. In this way, we believe that the museum should assume its social responsibility beyond the traditional point of view, of divulging and preserving the patrimony and assume itself as an agent of change and an educator for the values. In the first part of the work, it is presented a reflection on the necessity of education for the values in terms of the formal point of view and of the main methods used for its teaching, establishing the parallelism with the main learning theories in the museums and of which will be the role of the cultural institutions in the plan of the non formal education. The second part of the work consists in the case study of the EPAL´s Water Museum and its relationship with the school public. The analysis of the works developed by the children of the first and second cycle reveals some environmental concerns with pollution and to the efficient use of the water presenting respectively the environment attitudes: biocentrism (water as an essential to life) and anthropocentric (utilitarian perspective for Man). However we conclude that in terms of values nothing guarantees that the attitudes demonstrated as a child will result in sustainable behaviours in the future. The conclusion of this dissertation presents some suggestions so that the Pedagogical Service Águas Livres of the museum manages to materialize a more efficient environmental education with the school communit