THE USE OF GAMES TO APPROACH ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES: AN ANALYSIS OF THE NGO AKATU

Abstract

This research seeks to answer the question: what lessons about environmental education teach the games developed and made available on the internet by the Non-Governmental Organization for Conscious Consumption Akatu? A bibliographic research and analysis of empirical materials were carried out. Four games available on the Edukatu website (https://edukatu.org.br/) were selected, a space self-declared by the NGO as educational. The description of the games was carried out to pay attention to the recurrences of the methods and themes mobilized for the teaching of environmental education in these cultural artefacts.  It was found that the results found corroborate the concept of cultural pedagogy, because through the mechanics of games, students learn lessons about environmental education and learn actions that can be incorporated into everyday life. We reflect that by assuming that encouraging users to separate waste, read food labels, make better food choices, wash their hands without wasting water, save electricity, that games are thereby generating awareness about the environmental impacts. But there was also a certain superficiality of the concepts brought in the games, although the mechanisms present the lessons of environmental education in an interactive way, it does not deepen issues that rethink consumption, but rather presents alternatives to the existing problem.