How does teaching with affection affects us? : embracing radical affectivity

Abstract

The model of Environmental Education (EE) in which we believe in is based on Radical Affectivity, a fundamental empathic way of understanding the collective wish of taking care of common goods. The Environmental Education Group of University of Santa Catarina's members work with affection as environmental educators on extension projects, based on the main principles of the National Policy of University Extension (2012). Extension programs and EE's interactions generate relationships that make way for some concerns, like how does educating with affection affects us? Affection is used as a way of measuring the formative process' evolution. Considering this, the main objective of this article is to formulate guidelines for the process of self-evaluation of the extensionist students that work with EE. Hence, Affection is used as a way of measuring the formative process' evolution. The methodology consists of analysing the collection of recorded EE experiences through the year of 2019 at Municipal Elementary School Beatriz de Souza Brito. The result of that work germinated in an ecology of subjectivity, in which are present aesthetic, grammatical and intentional patterns. After researching the documents, we realized that the Radical Affectivity and the action-with-reflection were both present on the actions and their records. Thus, we affirm that the extensionist students' formative process, when developed in the way we propose, is necessarily (trans)formative and should be monitored through the lens of Affect. The guidelines are proposed in a manner of questions that should help with the perception of those transformations.