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Poetic mediation. Environmental aesthetic perception. Illustrated children's books. Art education. Tree
This thesis investigates the contributions of poetic mediation on the "Tree Being" through artistic-sensory experiences, aiming to understand its effect on the participants' environmental aesthetic perception. In the face of the current ecological crisis and the phenomenon of "plant blindness" (Wandersee and Schussler, 1998), which highlights the diminishing ability to perceive plants, the relevance of this research lies in contributing to theoretical and practical reflections on teaching and learning processes in environmental education and the arts. These processes are aimed at broadening and transforming environmental aesthetic perception (Bonotto, 2012) and fostering more conscious, sensitive, and affective human actions toward nature. Based on the applied qualitative research approach and Artography (Dias; Irwin, 2013), the pedagogical intervention took place in a continuing education course (extension program - UFRN). It involved dialogued lectures, the mediation of five illustrated children's literature books (LILI), artistic-sensory experiences, appreciation of participants’ artistic productions, and activities of reading and describing images. The theoretical framework articulated the works of various authors, including Martins (2017) and Barbosa (1989) on sensitive education, aesthetics, and poetic mediation, as well as Amarilha (2002), Coelho (2003), and Nikolajeva and Scott (2011) on children's literature, aesthetic reception, and the image-text relationship. Additionally, it engaged with studies on aesthetic attitude, everyday aesthetics, and the cartographic method by Stolnitz (2007), Saito (2017), and (Kastrup; Passo ; Escóssia, 2009), respectively. The analysis of the information generated by the study revealed a lack of prior training among participants for the poetic mediation of nature. However, it also indicated that, after the artistic-sensory experiences, participants showed an expanded and transformed environmental aesthetic perception and a heightened interest in the "Tree Being." This highlights the methodological contribution developed in this research and underscores the need to create teaching and learning processes in environmental education that integrate aesthetic, artistic, and affective aspects, making plant beings more visible and fostering more positive and meaningful relationships with nature.