Concept Map for Environmental Education Planning: Capacitation of Volunteers for the FIFA Football World Cup in Brazil

Introduction

Environmental education advocates an integrated view of knowledge, which should be translated into the governmental policies. According to the Treaty on Environmental Education for Sustainable Societies and Global Responsibility (TEESSGR) of 1992, environmental education should treat causes and interrelationships of global issues with a systemic approach and within their social and historical contexts. It is thought that the increase in understanding about complex socio-environmental processes can raise people’s awareness and stimulate new positive attitudes for environment conservation.

The necessity to improve this systemic way of looking at the interrelationships is felt everywhere. The continuous greening of our society with the popularization of the word ‘sustainability’ sometimes increases confusion, and sustainability has often been used as a magic word that can hide unsustainable attitudes under a positive rhetoric. For example, the tourism industry usually resorts to the use of sustainability jargon as a means of legitimization of their environmentally harmful practices (Yasarata, Altinay, Burns & Okumus, 2012).

The advent of the 2014 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup in Brazil is just an example of how the intensification of recreation and tourism in natural areas is superficially considered as a pathway to sustainable practices. The Brazilian Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Tourism and Embratur (the Brazilian tourism board) created the ‘World Cup Parks’ project (Parques da Copa), which aimed to encourage tourism by improving the infrastructure of 27 protected areas distributed throughout all the regions. This expectation is based on the fact that the public-protected natural areas are becoming increasingly important as tourist venues all over the world (Weaver, 2006). The simple intensification of visitation in natural areas does not necessarily correspond to an increase in environmental awareness by visitors, and the stimulus to visitation is not synonymous with sustainable policy.

The opportunity to combat this negligent way of dealing with the concept of sustainability had come from the invitation by the Brazil Volunteer Programme (Brasil Voluntário) to produce an instructional material to capacitate volunteers to receive the tourists during the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Skanavis and Sakellari (2011) suggested that education is the key to face the harmful effects of the domestic and international globalized tourism on environment, and they proposed that environmental education has ‘to play a more active role in order to encourage visitors and local population to alter their inappropriate behaviour and to assist the management of environmentally sound tourism development’ (p. 240).

The Brazil Volunteer Programme was created by the Brazilian government in anticipation of the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup and the 2014 FIFA World Cup. It cooperates with the volunteer programme of FIFA, and constitutes a network of social mobilization to act in airports, tourist attractions and other areas that experience large flows of people, aiming to provide support to the football fans, unaccredited media, tourists and the population in general. This programme is managed by the Ministry of Sports, and it also includes the participation of several ministries.

This article debates the necessity of educational support to tourists and sports enthusiasts on the safety and conservation of the local environment when hosting major sports events, by using the example of Brazil during the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The article analyzes an example of how tourism, sport and the environment were integrated in a governmental sphere with fragile support for the concept of sustainability and how this can be solved by an educational project. The development of the instructional material, focused on environmental and sustainability issues, was done in an integrative systemic framework supported by concept maps. The text is organized to present the design of the concept map as a tool for educational planning, the subsequent development of the instructional material based on this concept map, the implementation of the training in a virtual learning environment to more than 3,000 people and its evaluation.

The Necessity of an Integrative Systemic Framework: Case Study

Brazil had an earlier experience with providing training to volunteers during the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup. Volunteers were trained in several knowledge disciplines through a virtual learning environment. But the content on environment and sustainability was included only in the second edition of the training course for volunteers, which was focused on the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The Ministry of Sports demanded additional instructional material on environment-related knowledge for the new training of volunteers to complement the earlier one on the following topics: hospitality and tourism; soccer history and mega-events; safety and first aid; and foreign languages—English, Spanish, French and Italian.

When the opportunity for the inclusion of environmental issues in the volunteer training course appeared, the first idea was to integrate the actions of the different ministries. The Brazil Volunteer Programme does not include the participation of the Ministry of the Environment, and the World Cup Parks project does not include the Ministry of Sports. However, an instructional material could not be developed solely around this decision, and it was necessary to develop a structured design of environmental education strategy.

The instructional material was developed in a systemic approach, building an integrative view of the issues relative to environment and sustainability concepts contextualized by local examples. According to Richmond (1991, p. 2):

You are adopting a systems viewpoint when you are standing back far enough—in both space and time—to be able to see the underlying web of ongoing, reciprocal relationships which are cycling to produce the patterns of behavior that a system is exhibiting. You’re employing a systems perspective when you can see the forest (of relationships), for the trees.

The importance of an integrative view is a historical claim by environmental educators since the recognition of the influence of the Descartes and Bacon heritage that led to a fragmented way of seeing the world (Sheldrake, 1994). The fragmentation could imply difficulties, both in seeing the interconnections among vertical scales and also among the elements inside only one scale, that is, horizontally. Both the difficulties (vertical and horizontal—scales and interdisciplinarity, respectively) were addressed here. The hierarchic analysis implies the existence of different multidimensional scales corresponding to the levels of perception and problem analysis (Figure 1). This represents a systemic view with a top-down approach for planning, from a macro to a micro view, beginning with general objectives or foundations for the implementation of specific objectives and developments (Allen & Starr, 1982; Berlinck & Saito, 2010). The systemic approach was considered the general framework of the entire system rather than a specific hierarchical level. The hierarchy was organized in four basic levels: plus one level, zero level, zero minus one level and zero minus two level.

OPEN IN VIEWER Figure 1

Hierarchic Multidimensional Scales Representing the Levels of Perception and Problem Analysis for the Development of the Instructional Material

The main theoretical pillars were positioned as the upper level (the plus one level), according to the general hierarchical systems theory presented by O’Neill (1988): empowerment; critical thinking; and value. The interaction of these elements leads to an increase in awareness and promotes positive attitudes in favour of environmental values. According to Fransson and Gärling (1999, p. 374), ‘values are related to willingness to take pro-environmental action as well as to beliefs about environmental consequences’.

Empowerment was chosen because it refers to a process by which people, organization and communities gain mastery over their affairs (Rappaport, 1987, p. 122). Although empowerment has social, political and psychological domains (Friedmann, 1992), the development of instructional material and the raising of the skills and knowledge of volunteers, and through them, the domestic and international tourists, seems more focused on psychological empowerment. This last one can be defined as people’s feeling of great control over their own lives (Rissel, 1994). Nevertheless, it is possible to see the connections with the commitment to sustainable development, alternative development and inclusiveness in a social and political means (Friedmann, 1992; Singh & Titi, 1995).

Critical thinking is a result of critical education which aims to lead people to gain knowledge, skills and competencies (not just information) from science, making them capable of understanding the world’s complexity and inquire about evidences and facts. Critical thinking can empower learners to engage themselves in social actions as part of a democratic transformation of society to a wealthier and healthier tomorrow (Diduck, 1999; Fretwell, 2009; Saito, 2013).

Value can be defined as ‘an enduring conviction that a specific mode of conduct or end state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite mode of conduct or end state of existence’ (Caduto, 1985, p. 7), and thus it acts as a general guide to behaviour (Lewis, Mansfield & Baudains, 2008). These authors also consider value as an important aspect of system thinking in educational processes for sustainability. Finally, value orientation may affect an individual’s attitudes and behaviour, mediated by social context (Stern and Dietz, 1994). Empowerment, critical thinking and values are interconnected to lead to environmental concern and awareness, and also to sustainable attitudes.

The main theoretical pillars were set to the upper-level positioning because these pillars (representing theoretical choices) impose constraints on lower-level processes and dynamics. They establish a range of ways to handle environmental issues and orient the way knowledge can be integrated to achieve some educational and political objectives. Moreover, some particularities of the theoretical debates around those concepts (empowerment and critical thinking) are broader than the present scope of the development of the instructional material: they are part of higher debates that include other contexts which cannot be seen by us; thus, it is in accordance with the hierarchical systems theory which says that the upper levels cannot well be seen by the lower levels.

Based on the main theoretical pillars and the general framework, some basic questions emerged:

How can we help tourists have a pleasant visit during the 2014 FIFA World Cup?

This set of questions pointed to the central issues of the system:

tourism and satisfaction of the tourist;

The zero level was comprised of these central issues, which define the general context and the pathways to the development of the instructional material (the downscaling profiles). How to answer those questions (pathways to answer the basic questions) and what are needed to do that (detailed requirements for the answers to questions) represented the levels minus one and minus two of the system respectively.

The way to answer and the necessary knowledge requirements indicate the main knowledge areas we could integrate, such as ecology, climatology, geography, public health and tourism, which were operationalized by issues related to the biome concept, local and regional climate, biodiversity and endangered species, protected areas, public health, epidemiology, sanitation, sustainable tourism, social responsibility and local welfare.

Development of the concept Map

The effort to integrate this knowledge, being interdisciplinary in its approach, was in accordance to the Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education held in Tbilisi in 1977. A fruitful way to promote an integrative view of all this knowledge is by concept maps. The novelty in this is the use of concept maps for educational planning.

A concept map allows quick visualization of concepts and the topology of the interconnections among network entities or objects by linking expressions (Novak & Cañas, 2007). It is usually utilized to demonstrate and communicate knowledge domains to others. Concept maps, because of the easy comprehension of the set of relationships, improve communication between experts and ordinary people as an educational activity, as well as facilitate communication among the experts themselves who are usually isolated in their specialties. This feature would help overcome the problem of lack of proximity of theories, concepts and common goals among the different knowledge areas (Heemskerk, Wilson & Pavao-Zuckerman, 2003). Thus, conceptual modelling (including concept map) is recognized as a very useful technique for the construction of interdisciplinary knowledge (Daley, 2004).

The concept map was developed with the help of CmapTools software, developed by the Florida Institute of Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC), which allows us to develop nested knowledge models resembling a hierarchical structure. The first challenge was to convert the hierarchical levels of Figure 1 to relational links of a concept map (Figure 2).

As it was already argued, the plus one level constitutes an upper level that will offer some constraints to the lower level (Figure 3). Thus, the main theoretical pillars will guide the development of the instructional material, starting from the basic questions derived to the central issues which constitute zero level (Figure 4).

In a structured systemic approach, the questions were related to the central issues, and the way to answer them—selecting contents, concepts and processes—constituted the lower level (the minus one level) in the hierarchy (Figure 5). The necessary details in advance of the answering processes constituted the minus two level (Figure 6).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2

Note: Systemic approach box represents the general framework for the development of the instructional material.

OPEN IN VIEWER Figure 3

The Concept Map Showing in Detail the Plus One Level, Which is Constituted by the Main Theoretical Pillars

OPEN IN VIEWER Figure 4

The Concept Map Showing in Detail the Zero Level, Which is Represented by the Central Issues of the Instructional Material Identified from Basic Questions

OPEN IN VIEWER Figure 5

The Concept Map Showing in Detail the Minus One Level, Which Shows the Pathways to Answering the Basic Questions Proposed in the Immediate Upper Level

OPEN IN VIEWER Figure 6

The Concept Map Showing in Detail the Minus Two Level, Which Shows More Detailed Knowledge References to the Answering Processes of Minus One Level

Implementation of the concept Map to produce the content of the Instructional Material

In a systemic approach, the first question, ‘How can we help tourists have a pleasant visit during the 2014 FIFA World Cup?’ should be answered. This answer, related to the issue, ‘tourism and satisfaction of the tourist’, needs a description and an understanding of the logical structure of the sequence of matches each team has to play during the 2014 FIFA World Cup, carrying their fans with them.

Brazil is a megadiverse and large country, and the 2014 FIFA World Cup was organized in a way so that every national team has to play matches in different host cities, usually placed in different regions and biomes. The advantage of this planning was to put people in contact with the Brazilian diversity. On the other hand, the national team players and their respective fans were exposed to different environmental conditions, and they had to be prepared to face them. Two types of situations were expected: first, tourists who were determined to watch a football match would remain in a host city and need information about it; and second, the tourists who were planning to go to another city to watch the next football match of their national team would need information about the new destination.

The role of an instructional resource to train volunteers to receive and guide tourists during the 2014 FIFA World Cup was to help them understand this environmental diversity and complexity and thereby help tourists enjoy their visit. Here is the link to the next issue: environmental knowledge and tourism.

This recognition led to another decision about the development of the instructional material: the necessity to have a staff of researchers working on this development from different parts of Brazil to bring varied experiences and local knowledge. Researchers from different biomes and regions were contacted and a multi-institutional and multidisciplinary staff was formed.

Thus, the second question ‘What type of knowledge do they need to achieve this goal relative to environmental issues?’ appears interconnected. The list of necessary knowledge about the relationship between the environment and the 2014 FIFA World Cup included the concept of biomes, the characterization of each Brazilian biome, climatic features of the host cities (especially in June and July when the matches take place), sanitation and public health and the protected natural areas that could be visited near the host cities.

Additionally, the staff decided to mention that the mascot of the 2014 FIFA World Cup was inspired by Brazilian fauna: the mascot named ‘Fuleco’ is a three-banded armadillo, known scientifically as Tolypeutes tricinctus, a native and endangered species, and it is also an exclusively Brazilian species. In addition to these features, whenever it feels threatened, the three-banded armadillo reacts by closing itself into a ball shape. This characteristic was decisive in its choice as the mascot of the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The instructional material should be connected to the history of the implementation of this competition in Brazil: the opportunity to enhance biodiversity protection in close connection to the football theme.

The third question ‘How can we integrate different ministries and their policies?’ could be answered by recognizing that the World Cup Parks project should be explicitly presented and discussed inside the Brazil Volunteer Programme. This way, the different ministries could disrupt the lack of communication among the sectors in which the government was organized and promote their integration. The instructional material could contribute to increase people’s concerns about the importance and necessity of an integrative view also on management field. That was the issue, ‘integration among public policies relative to the environment and tourism’.

The fourth question ‘How can tourists enjoy the protected natural areas, and how can these protected natural areas support the large volume of visitors?’ was a very important part of our educational purpose. The corresponding issue (‘protected areas, environmental education and tourism’) was divided in two parts.

The first part was related to the welfare of tourists. Information about the location of these protected natural areas, their characteristics, importance and natural attractiveness were provided. The second part was related to the necessity of orienting visitors about the expected behaviour inside a protected natural area, and where they should avoid anthropogenic impact to preserve these areas.

The Brazilian Ministry of the Environment developed a campaign, titled ‘Conscious Behaviour in Protected Areas’, focused on terrestrial ecosystems, with another version for coastal and marine environment called ‘Conscious Behaviour in Reefs Environment’. These campaigns were developed years before the 2014 FIFA World Cup and at times, they seemed to be forgotten by policymakers even inside the Ministry of the Environment. A very precise orientation was presented to visitors in terrestrial protected areas for them to avoid setting fire to vegetation, feeding wild animals, disposing waste or opening new unnecessary trails which can damage vegetation in different ways.

Visitors should know that the anthropogenic feeding of wild animals like monkeys can increase the levels of glucose and cholesterol, causing obesity, heart problems and diabetes in these animals. Besides, this practice could have a negative impact on the interdependencies within the ecosystem: a reduction of seed dispersal was expected as a consequence of the decreased intake of native fruits—an important ecological function of these animals (Sabbatini, Stammati, Tavares, Giuliani & Visalverghi, 2006). In the same way, scuba divers, snorkelers and other visitors to the marine and coastal protected areas were advised to avoid standing on reefs and walking over corals because this can cause damage to reef structures. They were informed that the collecting of corals by tourists as souvenirs may cause long-term alteration to their communities, and they were also taught to avoid re-suspending sediments because this could undermine the resilience of reef ecosystems (Nyström, Folke & Moberg, 2000).

The fifth question ‘How can tourists be responsible for the local welfare?’ was a consequence of and a complement to the campaign ‘conscious behaviour’ because tourists should respect and protect both nature and traditional communities.

In Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park in central Brazil, for example, there are quilombolas, a people belonging to communities descended from runaway slaves (Ganem, Drummond & Franco, 2013). These hidden communities (called quilombos) in the heart of the country are winning rights to their land today, and they are helping to protect it. Two of the listed conscious behaviours were directly related to this issue, orienting visitors to protect the natural and cultural heritage of the visited places by treating the locals with courtesy and respecting existing standards. These listed conscious behaviours are in accordance with the principles of promoting cultural, linguistic and ecological diversity presented by the TEESSGR.

The aim of our educational planning was also to expand this traditional focus on local welfare to a public health issue, promoting a necessary interdisciplinary approach. Thus, a section about the several diseases associated with environmental conditions, such as dengue fever and malaria, among others, was included. Both dengue fever and malaria are diseases transmitted by the bite of an infected mosquito. All persons contracting the disease should keep themselves isolated because the epidemic cycle starts when the local mosquito bites an infected human being and becomes itself infected (Kolivras, 2006). Some direct advice was the use of mosquito screens on windows, the use of insect repellents (‘bug sprays’) and staying indoors. It was said that the social responsibility as a supportive, socially conscious citizen was to do everything not to be bitten by the mosquitoes. Thus, that individual would not be a propagating source of the disease and an epidemic could be avoided; tourists can be responsible and contribute to local welfare in this way, and this depends on a less selfish and a more informed way in which they see the world. This issue, ‘environmental impact, public health and tourism’, and this approach are even more important today when, besides dengue fever, we see the mosquito-borne Zika virus outbreak.

The sixth question was ‘How can we connect the general context of the instructional material with empowerment and critical thinking theories?’—a matter of interconnection between ‘environmental education and education theories’.

A derivative question from this last one was whether pathways to empowering volunteers could be found (and also tourists guided by the volunteers) in terms of self-improvement and aiming to take control of one’s own destiny beyond the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

The decision made during the development of the instructional material was to present the concept of Climate Normals. Although the main interest in climatic characterizations of the host cities was focused on the period of the matches (June and July), the idea of explaining the concept of Climate Normals came from the recognition that this concept could help people to plan their vacations in rational terms and avoid false advertising. In Brazil, many travel agencies announce cheap and discount travel deals for destinations during rainy periods.

The way to unmask false deals is to get help from scientific knowledge: the Climate Normals are represented by the latest three-decade averages of climatological variables, including temperature and precipitation (Arguez & Vose, 2011).

Consulting the Climate Normals, people can know if the travel agency is announcing discount travel deals for rainy destinations at that time or whether it really is a great opportunity for nice and cheap travel. Additionally, people can decide, based on the Climate Normals, the best time to travel to a certain place. This type of knowledge can give power and autonomy to people to take decisions by themselves and judge the opportunities and deals. This can be considered an empowerment process and a critical education process. To complete the framework of a critical education process, we included maps, tables and graphs to present information in different ways and shapes. This knowledge would be helpful for tourists and sports enthusiasts during the 2014 FIFA World Cup to be prepared for local weather but had clearly an additional objective.

All these concerns were represented in the concept map during the planning stage (Figure 7).

OPEN IN VIEWER Figure 7

The Complete Concept Map of the Instructional Material on Environment and Sustainability for the Brazil Volunteer Programme

The Implementation of the Planning in the Virtual Learning Environment

The instructional material was, first, developed from the concept map structure into a book (Saito et al., 2014), trying to cover all the concepts and the interconnections revealed by the concept map, in accordance with its complete and detailed structure (Figure 7).

After this development, because of the extension of the whole text, the instructional material had to be reorganized into small units with downscaled levels of information, so that the students could have a broader overview, and further be sent by hyperlinks to texts belonging to the minus one level in hierarchical systems. This was necessary because the training course was held in the customized Moodle virtual learning environment coordinated by the University of Brasilia, in the first semester of 2014. In contrast to the book, the lecture in the virtual learning environment could not be linear and extensive and had to be structured in nested, multilevel text layers.

In the first level of information, the student was introduced to a very short video, which explains the objective of the course and how knowledge about environment and sustainability is related to citizenry.

The second level led the student to the four greater units: Unit 1: Know the Brazilian biomes; Unit 2: Types and climatic subtypes; Unit 3: Environmental characteristics, sanitation and health in the host cities of the 2014 FIFA World Cup; and Unit 4: Federal government programmes for the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

From this second level of lectures, the student could have access to complementary texts, which belonged to a third level: each of the instructional units had a hyperlink to another text, offering details and additional data. This third level presented climatic data of each host city; explored concepts such as biopiracy or the danger of fire in Cerrado; and provided information on the environmental characteristics, sanitation and health in the host cities of the 2014 FIFA World Cup. A description of the main illnesses associated with environmental conditions was presented in the previous level. In this third level, the characteristics of each of the World Cup Parks project was also described, along with basic information about the mascot of the 2014 FIFA World Cup (Fuleco, the three-banded armadillo).

A glossary and references were presented at the end. For the conclusion of each unit, before continuing to the next one, the student completed an evaluation to check his or her progress.

The training course was held in the virtual learning environment at http://ead.brasilvoluntario.gov.br.

The Evaluation of the Training Process

The total number of volunteers who attended the course was 3,475 people from all of the 12 host cities, with different ages ranging from 18 years to over 60 years old. There were also more than 50 foreign volunteers who attended the course. Females corresponded to 56.8 per cent of the training volunteers.

A questionnaire was administered to the volunteers after the course. The Centre for Open, Continuous and Long Distance Education (CEAD) of the University of Brasilia, responsible for the virtual learning environment in which the course was offered to volunteers, decided to do the assessment of the course in general, rather than for each module (or discipline) separately.

The questionnaire was composed of some Likert items, all of them with five options (strongly disagree, disagree, undecided, agree and strongly agree) constituting an ordinal scale of measurement. A Likert item is a statement for which the respondents are requested to choose an opinion based on a subjective perception of the level of agreement or disagreement relative to the statement (Carifio & Perla, 2007).

The items of the questionnaire were as follows: item 1: The topics/contents of the modules were relevant to the role of volunteer; item 2: The course offered me a condition to work as a volunteer with higher quality and awareness of my actions; item 3: The depth of the content was appropriate to subsidize the activities of volunteer; item 4: The contents met my knowledge needs about the topics; item 5: The contents of the modules presented internal cross-references, integrating modules; and item 6: I considered the quantity of lectures adequate to the estimated time duration of the modules.

The result offered a positive evaluation of the course, with the majority of the respondents indicating that they strongly agreed or agreed with the Likert items. For item 1, ‘The topics/contents of the modules were relevant to the role of volunteer’, 92.4 per cent of the respondents indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed. For item 2, ‘The course offered me a condition to work as a volunteer with higher quality and awareness of my actions’, 94.4 per cent of the respondents indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed. For item 3, ‘The depth of the contents was appropriate to subsidize the activities of volunteer’, 89.7 per cent of the respondents indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed. For item 4, ‘The contents met my knowledge needs about the topics’, 91.4 per cent of the respondents indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed. For item 5, ‘The contents of the modules presented internal cross-references, integrating modules’, 89.4 per cent of the respondents indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed. For item 6, ‘I considered the quantity of lectures adequate to the estimated time duration of the modules’, 85.6 per cent of the respondents indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed. This last one presented the lowest level of agreement, and very few volunteers complained that the module on environment and sustainability was more extensive than they expected. Almost 50 per cent of the volunteers were college graduates. Additionally, the data demonstrated that more than 33 per cent of the volunteers were unemployed, thus they could invest time into knowledge acquisition.

The module on environment and sustainability was the only one that adopted a systemic approach supported by concept maps for the educational planning.

Conclusion

The adoption of an integrative systemic framework for the development of instructional material led to a more complete and dense structure because of the search for integration and the efforts to fill the gaps in knowledge and establish bridges between concepts.

The use of the concept map for the identification of the interactions among concepts and issues was effective for accomplishing the integrative systemic framework. This procedure allowed us to define the zero-level decision in a hierarchical system, and also the immediately lower-level decision represented by the theoretical foundations in terms of the concepts of integration, empowerment and critical thinking.

Environmental education requires careful strategizing to achieve the goals of promoting values and the necessary knowledge about critical issues so that stakeholders can develop an ecological literacy. Particularly, when the environment and tourism are connected and are part of the general framework of the education activity, certain issues, such as conscious behaviour and possible anthropogenic impacts on the environment, should be demonstrated. A concept map developed in a systemic framework is capable of handling these requirements.