Analysing The Theme Of Pollution In Portuguese Geography And Biology Textbooks

Analysing the Theme of Pollution in
Portuguese Geography and Biology
Textbooks
Rosa Branca Tracana
LIBEC/CIFPEC, IEC, Universidade do Minho, Portugal
Escola Superior de Educação da Guarda, Portugal
Cláudia Ferreira
Maria Eduarda Ferreira
Escola Superior de Educação da Guarda, Portugal
Graça S. Carvalho
Environmental education has been seen as a basic tool to contribute to the change of
conceptions, values and attitudes. Textbook analysis is a major element in the evalu-
ation of how the educational goals (at the legislative level of national programmes)
are implemented at the school level. The aim of the present study was to analyse the
progression of the topic Pollution along the 12 years of Portuguese primary and sec-
ondary schools, since the ﬁrst year (5/6 years old) up to the 12th school year (16/17 years
old), giving special attention to the ‘Impact on humankind’, ‘Economic consequences’,
‘Social risks’, ‘Aesthetic values’ and ‘Ethical, moral and cultural motivations’. Results
showed that: (1) the planet is seen as a resource for humankind instead of a resource
shared with other living beings; (2) it is given a stronger reliance on technologies in
sustainable development rather than to changes of individual and social behaviour;
and (3) it is conferred unlimited trust in science and technology solutions instead of
using the principle of precaution. This study shows that a change of textbooks is rec-
ommended in order to give more emphasis to the human role in solving the pollution
problems and contributing to improve pupils’ citizenship.
doi: 10.1080/10382040802168289
Keywords: environmental education (EE), pollution, sustainable development,
textbook analysis
Introduction
People and nature are no longer seen in opposite poles. Traditionally, nature
has been taken as an inﬁnite resource, but by the second half of the 20th century
‘environmental issues’ and associated problems have been a matter of concern
1038-2046/08/03 199-13 $20.00/0 C
2008 Taylor Francis
International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education Vol. 17, No. 3, 2008
199

200 International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education
elicited initially by environmental specialists (Freitas, 1999). Global pollution
problems create cumulative effects, such as the greenhouse effect, the ozone
layer reduction, acid rain or the loss of biodiversity, which have not always been
perceived by the lay people as environmental challenges. More recently, citizens
have become aware of these worldwide problems i.e. environmental citizenship be-
came a topic of general interest for several citizens’ groups leading to movements
that generate struggles in civil and political society contributing to the transfor-
mation, development and innovation strategies to solve environmental prob-
lems (Coimbra e Fernandes, 2005). The Agenda 21 (a document that emerged
from the Rio de Janeiro Conference in 1992) gave a strong stimulus for strate-
gies to make citizens aware of environmental problems and to construct these
strategies within a wide social, political and economic framework (Viana, 2006).
In this context, environmental education (EE) is seen as an important way
to mobilise citizens to participate in common environmental issues of contem-
porary society (Vargas, 2005). Thus, EE can be considered as an opportunity
for creating a democratic society, involving not only the present, but also the
future generations (Diaz, 2002 – referred to Vargas, 2005). In Portugal, with
the implementation of the Republican regime in 1910 – replacing the ancient
monarchy – several changes were quickly introduced. Although environmental
education in the educational system was by then just an illusion, with time it
became a multi-dimensional citizenship education in very similar terms to those
used nowadays (Freitas, 1999). However, the military coup in 1926 put an end
to the First Republic and an ‘Education for passivity’ was imposed during the
period of 1926 up to 1968 (Freitas, 1999) when a feeble attempt for democracy
occurred. Only after the revolution of the 25th April 1974 for a truly demo-
cratic system, the EE was introduced in both primary and secondary school
national programmes. The publication of the ‘Basic Law of the Educational Sys-
tem’ in 1986 reinforced the relevance of EE in pupils’ training, with the aim to
develop pupils’ attitudes towards a sustainable environment (Morgado et al.,
2000; Ferreira, 2003; Teixeira, 2003). With its focus on sustainable development,
environmental education has increasingly become a matter of concern in school
teaching and curricula during the last decades (Caravita et al., 2007). Therefore,
EE in schools has been implemented with the aim of not only promoting pupils’
learning about environmental sciences but also developing pupils’ attitudes and
behaviours towards better citizenship, based on the key issues of the Stockholm
Conference held in 1972 (Teixeira, 2003).
Several views on nature and environment can be identiﬁed (Clément
Forissier, 2001; Bogner Wiseman, 2002): with or without human beings; preser-
vation or utilization; spiritualist or materialist. From the deep ecology science
to the unlimited exploitation of nature, there are numerous perspectives for
sustainable development. It is, therefore, necessary to have a pluridisciplinary
approach with competences in both ecology and human/social sciences, in or-
der to foster an understanding of the environment as a problem, which has to
be solved by people’s management and action. Environmental education has
been seen as a basic tool to contribute to the change of conceptions, values and
attitudes.
The interactions between scientiﬁc knowledge (K), values (V) and social prac-
tices (P) (model KVP by Clément, 2006) is important in the several steps of the

Pollution in Portuguese Geography and Biology Textbooks 201
didactic transposition process (Chevallard, 1985; Clément, 2006) and a useful
tool to understand what is related to science or to values in a scientific pre-
sentation, for instance, in textbooks. Thus, textbook analysis is a major element
in the evaluation of how the educational goals (at the legislative level of na-
tional programmes) are implemented at the school level where students ‘must
acquire knowledge, competences and develop appropriate values towards a sustainable
environment’ (ME, 1988).
In general, Portuguese textbooks have been conceived mainly to get the label
‘according to the new programme’ (Tormenta, 1996) and teachers tend to use
textbooks as their main source for their teaching (Sá Carvalho, 1997; Teixeira,
1999). Therefore, textbook analysis can give us an insight of the main issues
taught and learnt in school.
The aim of the present study was to analyse the progression of the topic
Pollution along the 12 years of primary and secondary school, from the first
year (5/6 years old) up to the 12th school year (16/17 years old), giving special
attention to the items ‘Impact on humankind’, ‘Economic consequences’, ‘Social
risks’, ‘Aesthetic values’ and ‘Ethical, moral and cultural motivations’.
Methodology
In this study, we used a grid constructed by the European FP6 STREP project
Biohead-Citizen (CIT2-CT-2004-506015). This European research project ‘Biol-
ogy, Health and Environmental Education for better Citizenship’ aims to under-
stand how biology, health and environmental education can promote a better
citizenship, by analysing potential differences in 19 countries. It targets a reap-
praisal of subject matters among which are ecology and EE aimed at raising
future citizen’s awareness of the problems and challenges that environmental
sustainability imposes on our societies (e.g. environmental education in the
21th century). The group of 19 partners (13 European countries and 6 non-
European countries) who came from different cultural and educational com-
munities needed to share a common theoretical understanding and accepted
terminology concerning the constructs of values, beliefs, worldview and atti-
tudes targeted by our investigation. For the design of the grids to be applied
in textbooks analysis, these concepts had also to be linked to the educational
objectives pursued by EE in view of sustainability and education for citizenship.
The targets of the textbooks analysis are the values and beliefs that influence
topics such as nature (spiritualism, materialism), the relationship between hu-
mans and nature or environment (anthropo- or eco-centrism, socio-centrism,
pragmatism, idealism), the ecological and environmental dynamics (reduction-
ism, determinism, mechanicism, evolucionism) and the image of science and
technology (scientism, legitimate pluralism of citizens’ perspectives). The ap-
plication of the specific grid is to assess the occurrences of each indicator in the
text, by noting the page numbers and the putative quantity of images.
In the present study, we used only three parts of the long grid. One focused
on the ‘Conception: Individual versus social’ by looking at ‘pollution prevention
and management’ and ‘approaches to solve pollution problems and strategies to
prevent pollution’ (Table A.1); another part of the grid was on the ‘Impact of pol-
lution’ within the ‘Conception: Relation of human in respect to nature’, by looking at

the indicators ‘Impact on humankind’, ‘Economic consequences’, ‘Social risks’,
‘Aesthetic values’ and ‘Ethical, moral and cultural motivations’ (Table A.2); and
the third part was on the ‘Conception: Human and Nature’ (Table A.3). Tables
A.1 and A.2 were for images and text analysis whereas Table A.3 was for image
analysis only.
The theme Pollution is taught only in some Portuguese school grades, either
in geography and/or in biology. We selected the most used textbooks in each
grade (according to the Ministry of Education information) either in geography
or in biology. Thus, the corpus of this study was composed of nine textbooks
containing the ecology and environmental education theme: Geography text-
books of grades 7, 9, 10 and 11 (ages 10, 12, 15 and 16, respectively) and biology
textbooks of grades 3, 4, 5, 8, 10 and 12 (ages 8, 9, 10, 15 and 17, respectively).
Results and Discussion
Proportion of pollution in Portuguese textbooks
The analysis of the Portuguese textbooks showed that the most frequent sub-
topics in ecology and environmental education (EEE) are ‘Pollution’ and ‘Use
of Resources’, in contrast to ‘Biodiversity’ and ‘Ecosystem and cycles’, which
are less signiﬁcant in textbooks (Figure 1). The EEE occupies more than a half
of the themes treated in the grade 8 natural science textbook (85%) and grade 9
geography textbooks (70%), whereas it only occupies 6% of grade 3 textbook
(Table 1).
Pollution is the only sub-topic present in all grades (Figure 1). In grade 4, it
occupies 100% of the EEE and in grade 12 about 85% (Table 1 and Figure 1).
Analysis of pollution conceptions
In the grid for the theme Pollution (see Appendix), we analysed the concep-
tions individual versus social responsibility, as well as Human as owners of nature
and environment versus human as guests. The former intends to estimate the text-
book emphasis on change in individual behaviours or, in contrast, on change
in life styles at society level. In fact, education has been seen as a sine qua non
condition for political transforming action (Vargas, 2005) so that EE can lead to
construct important values and attitudes related to the everyday life. In order to
Percentage of pollution in relation to the 4 sub-topics
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
3
r
d
4
t
h
5
t
h
7
t
h
8
t
h
9
t
h
1
0
t
h
1
0
/
1
1
t
h
1
2
t
h
Ecosystems
Use of Resources
Biodiversity
Pollution
Figure 1 Percentage of pollution topic in relation to the four sub-topics.

Table 1 Proportion of pollution in relation to EEE in each textbook
Grades Textbook Ages No
of pages and percentage (in %) Percentage of
pollution in
relation to
EEE (in %)
Textbook EEE Pollution Pollution
3rd Natural Sciences 8/9 159 (100%) 9,5 (6,0%) 1,5 (0,9%) 16%
4th Natural Sciences 9/10 144 (100%) 9 (7%) 9 (7%) 100%
7th Geography 12/13 95 (100%) 12 (13%) 6 (7%) 50%
9th Geography 14/15 79 (100%) 55 (70%) 31 (40%) 56%
10th Biology 15/16 255 (100%) 48 (19%) 24 (10%) 50%
10/11th Geography 16/17 240 (100%) 40,5 (17%) 4,5 (2%) 11%
12th Biology 17/18 383 (100%) 49 (13%) 42 (11%) 85%
Biology textbooks Geography textbooks
understand these tendencies, textbook contents were analysed for the following
items:
(1) ‘Individual responsibility versus social responsibility’
(a) Emphasis on change in individual behaviours versus emphasis on
change in life styles at society level;
(b) Adhesion to moral norms descending from sources of authority versus
community involvement;
(c) Moral responsibility and ‘literacy’ versus political responsibility and
literacy.
In other words, the following question can be asked: Is the textbook describ-
ing, in a larger scale, an adhesion to moral norms depending on sources of
authority, or is it more dedicated to community involvement? Does it give more
emphasis to persons’ responsibility and their general literacy? According to
Roodman (1999 – referred to by Gil-Perez et al., 2003) several measures can be
taken in order to reach sustainable development. However, they are not centred
in one single aspect; on the contrary, they depend on the interaction between
technological and educative processes towards transformation of persons’ atti-
tudes and behaviours as well as policy changes. It is upon all of us to search
for solutions and adopt the right decision for each case before it is too late.
Education is once again a key measure because this can promote responsible
behaviours, beyond simple opinions (Almenar, Bono e Garcia, 1998 – referenced
by Gil-Perez et al., 2003).
The second conception – Human as owners of nature and environment versus
Human as guests – aims to understand how people are seen in relation to nature
in the analysed textbooks. Within this conception, there are several indicators
that reveal how human beings are positioned in the environment:

(1) ‘Human as owners of nature and environment versus human as guests’
(a) Humans as external source of pressure, pollution destruction versus
human as legitimate agents and users of resources;
(b) Planet as a resource to humankind versus planet as a resource shared
with other living beings;
(c) Human beneﬁts versus ecological beneﬁts in evaluation of the impact,
costs, priorities;
(d) Emphasis on the attainment of economic aims versus social, cultural,
ethical, aesthetic aims;
(e) Unlimited trust in science and technology solutions versus principle of
precaution;
(f ) Emphasis on risks, catastrophes, problems versus balanced information
about problems and about possible solutions.
In this particular conception, Relation of human in respect to nature, we looked
at the impacts of pollution, by using the following indicators:
(1) ‘Impacts of pollution’
(a) Impact on humankind;
(b) Economic consequences;
(c) Social Risks;
(d) Aesthetic values;
(e) Ethical, moral and cultural motivations (e.g. future generations);
(f ) Impact on ecosystems.
The analysis of Portuguese textbooks showed that the most mentioned Pollu-
tion items are the ‘Impact on humankind’ and the ‘Impact to ecosystems’ (Table 2),
perhaps due to the fact that these issues are more interesting to pupils and to
the general population since they can affect all of us in a direct way. The items
‘Ethical, moral and cultural motivations’ and ‘Aesthetic values’ are the least referred
to in all the analysed textbooks, followed by an increase in the items ‘Economic
consequences’ and ‘Social risks’ (Table 2). It is interesting to highlight that all the
geography textbooks analysed (7, 9, 10 and 11th) refer to ‘Ethical, moral and cul-
tural motivations’ or ‘Aesthetic values’; and the ‘Economic consequences’ and ‘Social
risks’ only appears at grade 7 with just a few text occurrences (Table 2). The item
‘Social risks’ appears more frequently in grades 8 and 9 of textbooks – the former
of biology and the latter of geography (Table 2).
Images from the textbooks give special attention to action related to people
– people doing this, people doing that – or the result of their action. In many
examples, people do not appear explicitly in images, but from the captions or
from the picture implicit message, it is possible to understand that it relates
to men. Thus, Portuguese textbooks represent men as the centre of the nature,
indicating that any alteration to nature – associated to the impact of pollution –
refers to alteration to the environment of man.
It is also interesting to notice that the item human management of environment,
which is related to a real understanding of the importance to protect the different
ecosystems, is less referred than the other item, negative human impact. It proba-
bly compromises the aim of environmental sustainability, which is so important
nowadays (Almeida, 2002; Woollcombe, 2002; Jacobi, 2003). The discourse of
environmental sustainability has turned to manage the effect of technologic

Pollution
in
Portuguese
Geography
and
Biology
Textbooks
205
Table 2 Number of occurrences (images and text) on pollution impact items found in Portuguese biology and geography textbooks
along the primary and secondaryschool
10 and 11
Grade item 3 biology 4 biology 5 biology 7 geography 8 biology 9 geography 10 biology geography 12 Biol
I T I T I T I T I T I T I T I T I T
Impact on humankind 3 – – 8 3 6 – 2 13 6 1 10 2 3 – 7 8 2
Economic consequences – – – – – – – 4 12 – – – 1 1 – – 3 –
Social risks – – – – – – 1 2 5 1 2 7 1 3 – 2 1 –
Aesthetic values – – – 1 1 1 – – 1 1 – – – – – – 2 –
Ethic, moral and
cultural motivations
– – – – – – – – 1 – – – – – – – 1 –
Impact to ecosystems – – – 12 12 7 1 2 13 18 7 21 1 1 2 15 10 10
I: Image occurrences T: Tex occurrences.

improvements and economic interests related to environmental degradation of
exploration of raw material and also in the perspective of the production of
waste (Oliveira Bizzo, 2005). According to Sachs (1993 – referred by Oliveira
Bizzo, 2005), to reach environmental sustainability, it is necessary to con-
sider simultaneously: (1) social aspects, with the goal of reduce distance between
life pattern of social groups; (2) economic aspects, made possible by an efficient
allocation and management of the resources, much more under macro social
criteria than micro social entrepreneurs and by regular flow of public and pri-
vate investment; (3) ecological aspects, involving measures to reduce the resources
consumption, and residual production, measures to intensify research, to intro-
duce clean and resource saving technologies, and to define rules that allow an
appropriated environmental protection; (4) spatial aspects, looking into a more
balanced configuration of the rural–urban issue; and (5) cultural aspects, in order
to get endogenous conceptions of involvement that respect the peculiarity of
each ecosystem, each culture and each place.
Since geography textbooks are more devoted to the use of resources as com-
pared to science textbooks (see Figure 1), it was expected to find a larger number
of images referring to human management in the geography books than in sci-
ence ones. In fact, surprisingly, the images in geography textbooks on the two
items “human management of environment” and “negative human impact” appear
scarce when compared to science textbooks.
As a matter of fact, geographic education has a major contribution in environ-
mental education, promoting pupils’ awareness about the impact of their own
behaviour, giving them scientific and technical information and helping them
to develop competences for decision making in relation to their environment
(Alberto, 2002).
It is interesting to notice that the stronger images that appear in relation to
this issue are about waste problems that are left at open-air (Figures 2 and 3) or
poured into the rivers, or images illustrating smoke being released from cars.
Such kind of images can be found in all Portuguese textbooks analysed, as if the
only pollution problems are these ones.
Analysis of pollution prevention and management
Approaches to solve pollution problems
Although grade 3 textbooks present images on the impact of pollution in hu-
mankind (Table 2), there are no occurrences in relation to individual versus social
conception, which means that this book does not highlight the pollution preven-
tion and management approach. Pollution problem solving is one of the greatest
difficulties nowadays, as it implicates not only specific technologies but also
changes of human behaviour (Layrargues, 2000; Alberto, 2001). Daily (1997 –
referred in Gil-Perez et al., 2003) suggests that sustainable development should
give priority to the technologies that increase productivity of resources, instead
of increasing the amount of extracted resources. It is interesting to notice that
changes in the technologies are referred more in textbooks than changes in in-
dividual and social behaviour that indicates clear priority to technologies. In
contrast to this technical information presented in textbooks (but that pupils
cannot use at their age!), environmental education has been viewed (at least

Figure 2 Toxic gases emission into the atmosphere. Textbook: ‘Magia da Terra’, 5th
grade, Natural Sciences.
in rhetoric) as the way to engage students and their parents in conservation
of natural resources and to promote recycling and reuse by citizens (Editorial,
2001). Such activities – that generally are not developed in textbooks – represent
early commitment to civic participation, which is an important component of
citizenship and civic education.
Similarly, in geography textbooks, there is an absence of text occurrences re-
lated to changes in behaviour (only with one exception in the grade 7). These
ﬁndings are in accordance with the anthropocentric attitude factor mentioned
by Vilkka (1997 – referred by Uitto et al., 2004), which is multidimensional, em-
phasising the role of science and technology in solving environmental problems,
which also could be named as technocentric attitude factor. For naturocentric-
ity, science and technology often represent utilitarianism and even the cause of
environmental problems. Thus, attitudes towards science and technology and
environmental attitudes may be in conﬂict (Uitto et al., 2004).
Strategies to prevent pollution
The educational and ecological strategies to prevent pollution are the items
more referred to in grade 4 until grade 12 (the last one). The legislative issue

Figure 3 Open sky garbage. Textbook: ‘Bioterra: Sustentabilidade na Terra’, 8th grade,
Natural Sciences.
is mentioned in three science textbooks: grades 8, 10 and 12. The importance
given to educational and ecological strategies to prevent pollution refers to the
relevance of education as a way to solve or prevent the pollution problem. Once
again a lower importance is given to changes in human behaviour. It seems that
there is adhesion to moral norms descending from sources of authority instead
of community involvement.
In conclusion, the analysis of Portuguese primary and secondary school text-
books on the topic Pollution highlighted the following issues: (1) the planet is
seen as a resource for humankind instead of a resource shared with other living
beings; (2) it is given a higher emphasis on technologies in sustainable devel-
opment rather than to changes of individual and social behaviour; and (3) it
confers unlimited trust in science and technology solutions instead of using the
principle of precaution. The ﬁndings of the present study show that a change of
textbooks is recommended in order to give more emphasis to the human role in
solving the pollution problems and contributing to improve pupils’ citizenship.
Society has maintained the anthropocentric position in relation to the envi-
ronment, as the resources wasting and over-consuming (Alberto, 2001; Jacobi,
2003), so it is necessary to promote an environmental awareness, centred in the

citizenship and in the reformulation of ethical and moral values, individual and
collective, in a perspective oriented to sustainable development.
Acknowledgement
This work had the financial support of the European project FP6 Biohead-
Citizen CIT2-CT-2004–506015.
Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Graça S. Carvalho,
LIBEC/CIFPEC, IEC, Universidade do Minho, Portugal (graca@iec.uminho.pt).
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Appendix: Extracts of the Biohead-Citizen Project EEE Grids Used
for the Textbook Analysis
Table A.1 Conception: Individual verus social
Content
(Themes,
topics) Indicators
Page
number of
images
Figure
number of
images
Occurrences
in text
POLLUTION PREVENTION AND MANAGEMENT
Approaches to solve pollution problems
Changes in individual
behaviour
Changes in social
behaviour
Changes in interaction
between individual and
social behaviour
Changes in technologies
(processes, materials,
devices, techniques, . . . )
Strategies to prevent pollution
Educational
Legislative
Economic
Ecological

Table A.2 Conception: Relation of human in respect to nature
Content
(Themes,
topics) Indicators
Page
number of
images
Figure
number of
images
Occurrences
in text
IMPACTS OF POLLUTION
Impact on humankind
(only beneﬁts and risks for
humans)
Economic consequences
Social risks
Aesthetic values
Ethical, moral and
cultural motivations (e.g.
future generations)
Impact to ecosystem
Table A.3 Content of images: Humans and nature
Images of
natural
environments
Images of
nature
with
human
activities
Urban
environment
Rural
landscapes
Humans in
environments
M F M+F
Images of local
environments
Images of
“exotic”
environments
Images
illustrating the
negative human
impact
Images
emphasizing the
beauty of nature
Images
illustrating
human
management of
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Analysing The Theme Of Pollution In Portuguese Geography And Biology Textbooks

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