Global issues in the classroom: the images help to think about the globalization in which we are inserted

Abstract

This paper intends to analyze approaches of the teaching of global issues in geography classes of basic school in Brazil considering the use of visual resources. Methodologically it is considered that the teacher and the students daily experiences should be insert in the geography classes. The images in the (and of the) globalization, in this context, bring us to the present and establish links with our forms of representation which may help in the argumentations of their meaning. The authors have called this kind of teaching the contemporary geography, using images and joining contributions from the students of “sensitive globalization”. Around of these proposals, the text also exposes three teaching experiences in a class of the last year of elementary school in a public institution of the city of São Leopoldo/RS. In the first experience, the students expose their thinking about what is globalization, in other moment, the effects of global processes are argued by the analysis of advertising images and finally it is presented an experience on which it is revealed the students’ feelings about the geography from the film “Babel”. In its conclusions, it is possible to identify by the teaching experiences an increase of students’ interest over globalization issues. In the teacher perspective, the work reinforce the relevance to the investigation of the teaching practice, because visual education demands a redefinition of forms of seeing the world and to think it in a dynamic process that shows us  the role that the production of images assumes in the globalized space, influencing manners of perceiving.