Abstract:

Going into the second year of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration (ONU, 2021), the challenges are still huge particularly for education. There is a pressing need for school curriculum that entail understanding of a protagonist action in ecosystem restoration and a culture of sustainability. Educational practices related to the socio environmental context, such as Physical Education and Environmental Education, have as their goals learning to learn in many dimensions: intellectual, affective, social and physical and psychomotor. The realization of this goal entails a dialogue between knowledge coming from different disciplines and human practices (SANTOS, 1989). This interdisciplinary approach is vital to tackle the complex challenges for creating a culture and value of ecosystem restoration and can be enhanced by taking into account citizen science as a collective and collaborative practice of science by researchers and the public. One missing aspect in this approach is the understanding of the meaning of first hand experiences (REED, 1996). Experiences that are possible because one 's own bodily movements create fields of action coupling the agent (the moving being) and the environment. Physical and Bodily Cultures in the curriculum usually overlooked evolutionary and ecological impact in cognition and focused only sport contents and physical exercise from a health perspective. Apart from social and health constraints on physical activities, there is a need to appreciate that cognition and emotion are embodied, embedded and situated. Human motor actions are tuned to physical and social surroundings, being them natural or artificial. There is a need for educational settings that consider how the perception-action can impact human development (HARARI, 2017; SANTURBANO, 2017). From the aphorism "All doing is knowing and all-knowing is doing" stated by Maturana & Varela (1987), we propose that the development of a socio-environmental activism needs to entail understanding and practices of the moving agents by their bodily techniques in tune with a sustainable environment. We have proposed Coupled Human Actions (CHA) as first-hand experiences done by embodied actions that create fields of action oriented to an ecological niche in which human motor actions adapt and are adjusted to a sustainable management of the environment (FELICIO & MANOEL, 2022). The concept of CHA was the basis for a exploratory investigation that looked at how human motor actions could be systematized in an educational program to create and strengthen links between health related physical activities and sensible environmental management in two National Parks in Brazil. The participants were invited to engage in environmental management activities while developing an awareness of how mobility and manipulative tasks are grounded in human actions that have not only physical and physiological effects but also enhance their perception of the natural settings they were in, helping them to develop an environmental awareness much needed for actions of ecosystem restoration. The results in terms of the participants' narratives and personal recordings of their relation with the natural settings (e.g. by drawings and photographs) indicated that curriculum in environmental and physical education would have much to gain by including subjects related to CHA in association the citizen science approach.

Acknowledgement:
The present study was grant from the CNPq/ICMBio/FAPs no. 18/2017.

Keywords:

Sustainability, health, physical education, gardening.