Perception of disaster risks among public-school students: Contributions to Citizen Science and Social Learning

Abstract

Areas occupied by low-income populations are often susceptible to landslides and floods both due to socio-spatial injustice and the occurrence of extreme events related to climate change. This study aimed to analyze the possibility of working on elements of risk perception associated with Citizen Science and Social Learning based on socio-environmental mapping with public school students in the state of São Paulo. The research included a lecture, fieldwork, and the use of GIS. The study showed that, in addition to engaging young people in specific risk reduction activities, it is necessary to promote strategies that involve the population through participatory methodologies and scientific dissemination to build a preventive and resilient culture.

Keywords
Socio-environmental mapping; Education; Geotechnologies; Social participation

Resumo

Áreas ocupadas por populações de baixa renda frequentemente estão suscetíveis a deslizamentos e inundações tanto devido à injustiça socioespacial quanto à ocorrência de eventos extremos relacionados às mudanças climáticas. Este estudo analisa a possibilidade de trabalhar elementos de percepção de risco associados à Ciência Cidadã e à Aprendizagem Social a partir de mapeamento socioambiental com estudantes da rede pública do estado de São Paulo. A pesquisa incluiu palestra, trabalho de campo e uso de Sistema de Informação Geográfica (SIG). Evidenciou-se que, além de engajar os jovens em atividades pontuais de redução de riscos, é necessário promover estratégias que envolvam a população por meio de metodologias participativas e da divulgação científica para construir uma cultura preventiva e de resiliência.

Palavras-chave
Mapeamento socioambiental; Educação; Geotecnologias; Participação social

Resumen

Las zonas ocupadas por poblaciones de bajos ingresos suelen ser susceptibles a deslizamientos de tierra e inundaciones debido tanto a la injusticia socioespacial como a la ocurrencia de eventos extremos relacionados con el cambio climático. Este estudio tuvo como objetivo analizar la posibilidad de trabajar elementos de percepción de riesgo asociados a la Ciencia Ciudadana y al Aprendizaje Social a partir de mapeos socioambientales con estudiantes de escuelas públicas del estado de São Paulo. La investigación incluyó conferencias, trabajo de campo y uso de SIG. El estudio demostró que, además de involucrar a los jóvenes en actividades específicas de reducción de riesgos, es necesario promover estrategias que involucren a la población a través de metodologías participativas y de divulgación científica para construir una cultura preventiva y resiliente.

Palabras clave
Mapeo socioambiental; Educación; Geotecnologías; Participación social

Introduction

Generally, in Brazil, the situations of environmental risk are related to geo and hydrometeorological threats, such as landslides and floods, induced by social vulnerability, i.e., the socially constructed risk due to the precarious conditions in which the residents live (Nogueira & Paiva, 2018). According to Canil et al. (2020), Brazilian urban outskirts are characterized by unsafe housing conditions for the low-income population. For these authors, these areas would represent segregation and social-spatial injustice worsened by the increase in the frequency and magnitude of extreme events related to regional and global climate variability, resulting in risky situations and disasters. Therefore, Beck (2010) points out that the risks are mostly inversely distributed in regard to wealth. The richest populations can buy safety and/or have the capacity and the possibility of dealing with, bypassing, or compensating risky situations.

In this context, according to Sulaiman (2018), risk reduction has the general objective of avoiding disasters from occurring or, at least, causing the minimum impact possible on human life and material goods. This author believes that decreasing losses and social-economic damages are reached when the populations become more resilient. Cardona (1991) defines the concept of resilience as the ability to face the impact of dangerous phenomena and recover from them. Hence, Trajber et al. (2016) argue that due to the many uncertainties, it is urgent to use knowledge and innovation to build sustainable and resilient societies.

Still, according to Trajber et al. (2016), environmental education has a fundamental role. It should be guided toward new action fronts on sustainability, climate change, and the creation of a culture to prevent risk and foment resilience, mainly for the adaptation of more vulnerable populations. Seeking sustainable development, Sorrentino et al. (2005) believe that environmental education should be guided by environmental rationality, multidisciplinary, in which the environment is seen as a support for the relationships between the physical-biological environment and the communities, as well as with a culture produced by its members. Thus, environmental education can improve the quality of life of human beings and all other species and natural systems on the planet. In this sense, strategies focused on environmental education connected to risk reduction can contribute to reaching the objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by the United Nations (UN), mainly the objectives " 11- Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable" and “13- Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”, which directly approach the increase of resilience towards disasters and the capacity to adapt to climate changes.

Furthermore, social participation is extremely important to effectively reduce the risks because, according to Olivato (2013), it is vital to guarantee legitimacy and governability in planning and establishing public policies. Therefore, education is essential in stimulating the population's participation, mainly in the most vulnerable communities. However, according to Sulaiman (2018), the education practices in risk reduction should be based on dialogue and participation to allow the sharing of knowledge and responsibilities, as well as considering the social, economic, and political contexts, i.e., to analyze how the space is occupied, the infrastructure and community social practices.

Santos and Jacobi (2017) state that using participative methodologies contributes to building local environmental knowledge, allowing the development of critical and civic attitudes while favoring the knowledge and reflection about society-nature relationships, proposing the development of new values and practices that seek an environment that is increasingly more ecologically balanced and socially fair. These authors believe that, when used in the school environment, participant methodologies can create an education focused on the formation of citizens able to understand the interdependence between society-nature relations and the quality of places and environments.

Faced with this scenario and considering the importance of school as a center to socialize, build, and multiply knowledge, attitudes, and values for the education of conscious citizens sustainably integrated into their environment (Santos & Bacci, 2019), the current research analyzes the possibility of working with elements to perceive risk and participative processes associated to Citizen Science and Social Learning, using socio-environmental mapping with high school students from the public state system of São Paulo, Brazil.

Efforts in studies and practices in this direction seek to help build more resilient communities. We highlight the importance of school in this process to help create the conditions that incentivize citizen participation in producing technical-scientific knowledge and making science more democratic and collaborative.

Risk perception

Attitudes, beliefs, feelings, and personal rules influence how one understands risk or the probable source of risk. Thus, risk perception has a social nature (Kuhnen, 2009). “We can say that it is not about the psycho-physical perception but the social perception, as we are dealing with judgments, attributions, memory, emotion, motivation, risk categorization, or different risk sources, be they technological, environmental, or social” (Kuhnen, 2009, p. 47).

According to Burton et al. (1993, cited by Souza & Zanella, 2009), the factors that interfere with human perception of the extreme events of nature are Magnitude, Frequency, Duration, Area Extension, Deflagration Speed, Spatial Dispersion, and Temporal Dispersion. However, besides the factors related to extreme events and individual experiences, Souza and Zanella (2009) stress that the media is highly influent on how the population perceives risk because how communication portrays or disseminates it can contribute to preventing disasters or, in some cases, hinder this work. According to Lean (1991, quoted by Souza & Zanella, 2009), the media can collaborate to prevent disasters by broadcasting useful information to people and pressuring the public power to fulfill its role. However, the author highlights that it can also hinder this process when portraying the risks dramatically and exaggeratedly, which can frighten the audience. Moreover, Campos (1999, as quoted by Souza & Zanella, 2009) also points out that it is not possible to attribute certain behaviors only to the risk-area residents' lack of information because communication is not enough to develop preventive habits. Therefore, it should be associated with environmental education strategies that build critical knowledge about the risks and stimulate new values or resume lost ones, contributing to establishing positive attitudes toward the environment and people.

Hence, considering the risk perception of different social actors and populations is relevant to reducing risk disasters. According to Souza and Zanella (2009), understanding this perception allows one to perceive and recognize the several reactions of different individuals in risky situations and extreme events. Consequently, this result has the potential to be used as a tool that can contribute to possible initiatives in the community. Thus, according to Olivato (2013), studies about risk perception aim to analyze how individuals or social groups understand and behave toward risk, evaluating the strategies, the alternatives, and the actions used to live with several types of dangers. These studies can support the creation of public policies and establish actions and strategies for shared management.

Citizen science, social learning, and socio-environmental mapping

According to Marchezini (2020), the efforts to increase social participation and the integration between society and the scientific and academic community have increased in the last decades. In this context, Gomes et al. (2022) believe that Citizen Science can contribute to engaging communities in developing public policies about relevant social and environmental themes. Parra (2015) states that the concept of Citizen Science is being disseminated in several knowledge areas, as they refer to the participation of the general public in scientific research activities, for example, with intellectual effort, local knowledge, and/or tools and resources that favor the interaction between science, politics, and society, to collaborate for science democratization. According to Marchezini (2020), few studies use this method in the scope of risk and disasters in Brazil. However, this author believes that this methodology can be applied to unite high schools, civil defense, and community representatives in actions to produce knowledge about risks and propose small local interventions to reduce disaster risks that contribute to gradually building knowledge and incentivize the engagement of non-scientists in phases of transdisciplinary studies.

Regarding social participation, another empowering concept for this dimension is Social Learning, which has the basic assumption of “learning together to share” (Harmonicop, 2003, quoted by Jacobi et al., 2006). To Jacobi and Franco (2011), this process demands collaborative and participative methodologies that connect the social, environmental, cultural, and affective dimensions, including the processes of reflexive and engaged information, sensibilization and construction of political-educational spaces of citizenship formation, collaborative dialogues, internationalization of environmental issues, ethical and political commitment with new behaviors and common feelings toward the urgency to develop sustainability.

Hence, among the tools that can be used to incentivize the participation of different social actors, we can highlight the socio-environmental mapping that, according to Santos (2013), consists of a didactic-pedagogical resource to recognize/know an area in its different aspects. The same author stresses that this methodology contributes to the investigation of socio-environmental information to develop a diagnosis of local reality to favor the reflection about the consequences of how to use and occupy the space mapped for residents' life quality, helping create and plan actions and proposals that seek to improve the place.

The creation of socio-environmental maps allows the development of didactic-pedagogical actions that complement the reading of the space, such as photos, interviews, text productions, drawings, dioramas, fieldwork, and didactic games, which can ease the understanding of the build – or destroyed – space by everyday socio-environmental relationships determined by different interests (Santos, 2013).

Santos and Bacci (2011) believe that socio-environmental maps should be developed to address such issues. They allow: i. recognize/know the place one lives, ii. reflect on this space and its problems and conflicts; iii. dialogue about the socio-environmental context, seeking to find consensual solutions to the problems and conflicts pointed out to transform the environment.

Methodological procedures

In this section, we present the pathway used to build this research. First, we present the research locus, and then the work developed. Finally, we show how the data was collected.

Study area

This research was conducted at Escola Técnica Estadual São Mateus [São Mateus Technical State School], located in the district of São Mateus in the east area of São Paulo, capital of the São Paulo state, close to the avenue Aricanduva and the river of the same name (Figure 1). São Mateus is a district on the city's outskirts that, according to the Mapa das Desigualdades de 2022, developed by Rede Nossa São Paulo, has 6.1% of houses in favelas. Besides this, the mapping of geological risk conducted by the municipal Civil Defense in 2021 identified that, since 2010, the number of houses in risk areas has increased, mainly due to new occupations in the banks of streams and areas of environmental protection (Prefeitura do Município de São Paulo, 2021).

Figure 1
School location (Adapted from IBGE, 2021; GeoSampa, 2022; Google Satélite, 2022).

The study was conducted considering this context. Below, we describe how the proposal was implemented in the school.

Activities with the school

The research collected data from activities with students during eight Geography classes followed by the teacher responsible for the subject. The activities were divided into three phases (Figure 2): i. Alignment with the theme, with lectures and questions; ii. Fieldwork; iii. Socio-environmental mapping of risks. The study was held with 2 classes of 40 students each, the first of Grade 10 and the other of Grade 11. The Geography teacher followed all activities. The Research Ethics Committee from Universidade Estadual de Campinas (CEP/Unicamp) approved the project under CAAE n.^o 46643721.5.0000.8142).

Figure 2
Graphic representation of research phases.

The first phase was a lecture with a specialist from the Instituto de Pesquisas Ambientais do Estado de São Paulo (IPA- São Paulo Institute of Environmental Studies) about the theme “Environment, Protection, and Civil Defense” that approached examples of events related to inundations and landslides in the state of São Paulo and concepts related to the theme "disaster risks," such as types of risks and disasters, risk levels, vulnerability, susceptibility, prevention, resilience, and management risk. After the lecture, the students were divided into groups of five people, in a total of 16 groups, and answered the following questions:

1. What did you understand from the lecture? Have you ever heard about this topic?

2. How do you see the school neighborhood in the context of risks and disasters?

In the following phase, fieldwork was conducted with each class. The activity took place in the school surroundings and the students should observe, take photos, and/or make notes on the following elements indicated by the Centro Nacional de Monitoramento e Alertas de Desastres Naturais (Cemaden- National Center to Monitor and Alert about Natural Disasters):

1. Elements causing risk, such as deforestation, gas stations, irregular waste disposal, etc.

2. Vulnerable populations, such as occupations in risky areas, childhood education schools, nursing homes, etc

3. Existing protection measures, such as water reservoirs, gabion walls, riparian forests, etc.

In the last phase, the students developed the socio-environmental mapping of risks in the school’s computer lab, keeping the same groups of five members from the other phases, using the free software of Geographical Information System QGIS and Google Earth. The option to implement this activity digitally was because the research public was composed of teenagers from a highly connected generation involved with the new technologies. However, the activity kept the assumptions described by Santos (2011), i.e., the mapping elaboration was based on the dialogue between the members of each team about the different perceptions and problems observed individually, seeking to build a collective map, and the synthesis of the main problems and local conflicts according to the group. First, they used the following archives in a shapefile (shp.) format available online, which are relevant to study the school's area based on the mapping in QGIS (Table 1):

Table 1
Georeferenced data used for a preliminary mapping of the study area

Data	Source	Access
São Paulo districts	PMSP, 2015	http://dados.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/pt_PT/dataset/distritos
APA Parque and Fazenda do Carmo	CBH-AT, s.d.	https://comiteat.sp.gov.br/a-bacia/shapefiles/#1554740430659-5def811e-23bb
Hydrography	CBH-AT, s.d.	https://comiteat.sp.gov.br/a-bacia/shapefiles/#1552657669711-2a934d6f-fbbf
Floodable area (taken from the Geotechnical Map)	PMSP, 2015	http://dados.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/pt_PT/dataset/carta-geotecnica
Detention reservoir	GeoSampa, 2017	https://geosampa.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/PaginasPublicas/_SBC.aspx

• Source: created by the authors.

In their fieldwork, students were advised to locate and draw on the map the points and areas of reference suggested by Cemaden:

1. General aspects: school, commercial space, river, roads, among others.

2. Landscape elements that can cause environmental risks include the occupation of preservation areas, deforestation of riparian forests, siltation, pasture in the hillsides, erosion, garbage, etc.

3. Existing protection measures: riparian forests, hydrometeorological stations, gabion walls, cisterns, and others.

4. Risk areas: draw the whole area subjected to risk, the places that suffer inundation, flooding, landslide, stone rolling, strong winds, drought, siltation, and pollution, among others.

We presented here how the activity was proposed. After, we show how the data was collected and analyzed.

Data collection and analysis

The present research uses some assumptions of the research-action method that, according to Parra (2015) and Jacobi (2011), is among the methodologies that contribute to the development of citizen science and social learning. The study sought to reach the characteristics of research-action described by Toledo (2011): social actors' engagement in reflecting on the problem, reality analysis, collective learning, and community empowerment.

According to Toledo (2011), research-action encompasses instruments and techniques aiming to involve participants. In this research, the data collection tools were participant observation, questionnaire application, and map creation using SIG. Thus, the analysis of obtained data was conducted from the observation of students’ participation in the activities proposed and the analysis of the answers to the questions – their previous knowledge of the theme – and the elements portrayed by the students in their maps – teenagers' risk perception in the school area after the lecture. The literature review was resumed from the elements presented by the students in their answers and maps to discuss the data collected.

Results

The lecture was held at the end of April 2022. Perhaps the most interesting moment was at the beginning, in which the lecturer presented a landslide photo and asked what came to the students' minds when they saw it. Many talked about the dam break in Brumadinho, in state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 2019. From this first conversation, we can highlight that the students confused landslides with dam breaks and that they did not cite more recent events, such as the landslides in Franco da Rocha and Francisco Morato, both in January 2022, in São Paulo metropolitan region or the event in Petrópolis, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, in March 2022

Thirteen groups answered the questions. In general, they showed in their answers the concepts approached during the lecture, such as the importance of mapping risks, types and levels of risk classification, vulnerability, possible losses and damages caused by disasters, and favoring intervention/human influence in these events. Furthermore, nine groups affirmed that they had heard about the topic before. However, the concepts of “prevention," "resilience," and “climate” and the possible causes or aggravating factors in the disasters related to social factors, such as social inequality in the country or irregular occupations, were not mentioned by the students. Seven of the nine groups that declared having heard about the theme affirmed they had superficial contact with the subject and knew some terms and events raised during the presentation.

The second question, about what they perceived in the school’s neighborhood regarding risks and disasters, showed that most groups (10 teams) see disaster risks in the school neighborhood. To answer this question, students cited some phenomena, such as landslides in the hills in front of the school and inundations due to the school's proximity to the river. However, the students frequently confused some terms, for instance, “flood” and “flooding” to refer to inundation and "collapse" or "crumbling" to refer to landslides. Besides this, rain was quite cited as a trigger for disasters, and two groups used the word "safe" to describe the school's neighborhood regarding natural disasters. A group affirmed that it did not know of any event of this nature in the region. The answers showed that most students already had a certain degree of risk perception in the first activity.

In the fieldwork, the use of applications was not obligatory because they needed to use mobile internet data packages. Few students used the applications, took photos, and/or made notes. During the trajectory, points of attention were indicated, such as inadequate waste disposal, gabion walls in part of the river Aricanduva, the presence or lack of vegetation, gas stations, deforested areas close to the hills, changes in the relief, etc. Furthermore, in this walk, the responsible teacher and the researchers explained some basic concepts while dialoguing with students, such as the difference between "inundation" and "flooding," how a detention reservoir works, the ideas of "siltation," "river rectification," "tributary river," among others. Some students also pointed out notions previously studied in class, such as "river eutrophication" and "lack of basic sewage." They also observed points not indicated by the teacher or researchers, such as the “junkyards” in Avenue Aricanduva and the fallen electric wires in part of Avenue Rio das Pedras. Furthermore, many students stated that, besides not knowing the Inhumas reservoir, they had never seen a detention reservoir up close. Many affirmed that they had never walked along the Avenue Aricanduva, despite its proximity to the school, and only knew the trajectory by bus. Most of them affirmed that they did not know Avenue Arraias do Araguaia and were not used to walking around the school because they considered the region dangerous due to the risk of robbery. Thus, most students only walked the trajectory between the bus stop and the school or their houses. In general, students seemed interested in the activity.

The socio-environmental risk mapping developed by students showed that most mapped points and areas are part of their routine and related to urban life, encompassing inadequate waste disposal, traffic accidents, urban violence, and the conditions of streets and avenues close to the school (Figure 2). However, some points and areas were delineated as susceptible to natural risks, such as flooding, floods, landslides, and fire. Students also indicated areas and points with biological risk – dengue, zika, and chikungunya –, chemical contamination or pollution, and explosions – gas stations and inactive landfills. No group used the term “inundation” (Figure 3). For more clarity and the limited space in the legend, the final map created by assembling the maps done by all students' groups was divided into two parts, and the legends were unified; the duplicities, i.e., areas indicated more than once with the same risk type, were excluded.

Figure 3
Socio-environmental mapping of risks developed by students Part 1– Urban risk; and fires and explosions.

Figure 4
Socio-environmental mapping of risks developed by students Part 2 – Flooding or flood; Landslide; Contamination and Pollution; and Biological or Chemical Risk.

We showed the results of the activity here. Now, we reflect on the research findings.

Discussion

Students’ answers to the questions related to the lecture show that, as described by Sulaiman (2018), the educational practices adopted in the country face the risk as inevitable and do not approach the socio-historical causes that make these communities vulnerable because students did not cite concepts, such as "prevention" and "resilience," nor approached environmental factors that favor the occurrence of disasters, such as climate change, or social issues, like social inequality. The fact that students immediately remembered the dam rupture in Brumadinho/MG – in 2019 – when hearing about the disasters, at the expense of more recent cases of inundations and landslides, can indicate that the way this event was portrayed in the media at the time made it more memorable for the teenagers, because, as pointed out by Souza and Zanella (2009), the media interferes in the population’s risk perception depending on how it portrays the events. Thus, the media can contribute to preventing disasters when disseminating useful information or hinder it when reporting events dramatically and exaggeratedly.

The answers also show that though the Política Nacional de Proteção e Defesa Civil (PNPDEC- National Policy of Protection and Civil Defense), Law n.^o 12608/12, incentivizes the inclusion of activities related to the risk reduction of disasters in K-12 education, actions of this type are not common in reality. Due to the complex and interdisciplinary nature of the theme, only a lecture to deal with the topic in a condensed manner was not enough to introduce and promote the theme in the school. The activity in the format of an expository class also reinforced the traditional dynamics used in classrooms because it was grounded in the dissemination of an expert's technical knowledge, with no dialogue or knowledge exchange. This practice is characterized by Sulaiman (2018) as reduced, limited, technocentric, and unidirectional. Consequently, we raise the hypothesis that it would be more fruitful to associate a series of lectures and short classes to divide the subject into sub-themes – such as the definition of risk and disasters and their causes and consequences; risk mapping and management; and prevention and resilience – with different activities that make students the protagonists of their learning, among them, we highlight debates in the class, games and tasks to do at home, such as studies and interviews with family members and neighbors about their experiences with these type of events.

Generally, the field works raised students’ interest indicating that, as pointed out by Santos and Bacci (2011, 2019) and Santos (2013), field trips can be a good way to raise students' curiosity and enthusiasm for the subjects studied in the classroom, incentivizing the debate about the reality, the problems, and conflicts where the school community is located. Therefore, studies about school neighborhoods can help build knowledge on how to protect communities. However, based on the activity's qualitative analysis, the classes could have been divided into smaller groups, allowing all students to listen and debate about the teacher and researcher's observations. Another alternative that might have promoted positive results would be the definition of a trajectory and a previous study of the area so that the students could establish the points and areas that called more attention or that they already knew to check them during the fieldwork.

Students' mapping reveals the predominance of elements related to urban life, such as the risk of robbery, inadequate waste disposal on the streets, traffic accidents, and street and sidewalk conditions. This result corroborates Soares and Barbosa (2014), which shows that students in urban areas tend to consider violence as the main source of dangerous situations in their daily lives, followed by traffic accidents. Hence, we can raise the hypothesis that, among our study participants, this predominance can be related to the fact that these are current aspects discussed in teenagers' daily lives and, consequently, more easily identifiable. In their families, the teenagers are probably alerted to the risks in their home-school trajectories, such as robbery and pedestrian accidents. Furthermore, subjects related to public maintenance, urban security, and the government's role are frequently discussed and commented on in the media and in people's everyday lives, highlighting the role of media and personal experiences in people's risk perception, as Souza and Zanella (2009) point out.

Furthermore, though less portrayed, environmental risks are also present in students' maps. However, vulnerable populations with precarious housing near the rivers and recent occupations on steep slopes were not cited. This absence or less attention given to the environmental risks associated with social inequality and the relationship society-nature can indicate that, in reality, the concept of environmental education described by Sorrentino et al. (2005) — in which the environment is seen as a support for the relationships between the physical-biological domain, the communities, and their culture to contribute to improving the life quality of human beings, all species, and natural systems that live in the planet — is not part of the school routine. Hence, environmental education guided by sustainability, the facing of climate change, and the development of a culture to prevent risk and foster resilience, as characterized by Trajber et al. (2016), is still very far from the reality of Brazilian public education.

Generally, the socio-environmental mapping of the school area was conducted because the elements indicated by Santos (2013) that establish this tool — such as the investigation of socio-environmental information, collective and collaborative construction, incentive to dialogue, and the reflection and use of cartographic resources — were covered during the activities with the students. Furthermore, it is possible to observe that the concept of Citizen Science described by Parra (2015) was enacted during the activities with the school aiming to incentivize “non-scientists/researchers” to actively contribute to scientific development through their intellectual effort, local knowledge, and personal experiences. However, this study did not reach the Social Learning described by Jacobi (2011), in which the solution to complex problems is sought through collective practices based on the dissemination of information, knowledge, and network actions, considering that the activities with the students were restricted to a small part of the school community and, apparently, the participant students did not talk about it with the classmates that were not involved in the mapping. Thus, the activity was punctual, as no information or knowledge was shared within the community.

We highlight the need to promote activities that are not restricted to the school community, but that also engage the local population to effectively treat the theme "risk of disasters" in the classroom, contributing to more resilient communities, as presupposed by objectives 11 and 13 of UN’s 2030 Agenda. The school becomes a bridge between technical-scientific knowledge and the more vulnerable populations through initiatives and events focused on the incentive of social participation and the dissemination of science and useful information to prevent, prepare, and answer possible disasters so that everyone can know their role in reducing risks.

Final remarks

The present study sought to analyze the possibility of working elements of risk perception and participative processes associated with the concepts of Citizen Science and Social Learning by using a socio-environmental mapping methodology with high schoolers in the São Paulo public system. The research shows the need to critically work on the theme so students can relate the contents to their daily lives. Therefore, we raise the possibility that a good way to approach the theme in the classroom is to involve students in the whole process through different didactic activities in which they are protagonists, such as research, debates, didactic games, interviews with family members and neighborhood residents, and the creation of a fieldwork plan from the survey of areas and points they believed to be relevant in the study of the region.

Moreover, we can see that, though academic studies and Brazilian legislation incentivize the participation of young people in the reduction of disasters, there is still a long way to go in the practice. However, just engaging younger generations is not enough to build resilient cities and to develop a preventive culture in the country, seeing the need to use the physical and symbolic space played by the school within the community to incentive the surrounding population to participate in the process, from the initiatives and events that promote participative and collaborative methodologies and the scientific and informative dissemination, making school a space to share knowledge and responsibilities.

Finally, when involving public high school students in the city of São Paulo, the research results show how an experience of the interactions between the academy and society can support science democratization and collaboration in the scientific process. This movement occurs not only through the information from the scientist to the general public but also by providing a space for local knowledge and personal experiences of "non-scientists/researchers" to be used together with scientific knowledge to reflect and act on the problems and conflicts in the daily life of society.

• Support and Funding:
  CAPES – Fundação Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (88887.608479/2021-00).
• Copy Editing services:
  Portuguese version - Copy editing and standardization of citations and bibliographical references (7th. Edition APA): Camila Pires de Campos Freitas <[e-mail]>
  English Version: Viviane Ramos <[e-mail]>

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Edited by

• Responsible editors:
  Associate Editor: Vanessa Fonseca Barbosa <https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2901-015X>
  Editor-in-Chief: Chantal Victória Medaets <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7834-3834>

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  28 Oct 2024
• Date of issue
  2024

History

• Received
  03 Oct 2023
• Reviewed
  27 Apr 2024
• Accepted
  19 May 2024