Botany and environmental education in elementary school in Brazil: articulating knowledge, values, and procedures

Abstract

The increasing urbanization and alienation from nature reduce children’s opportunities to interact with plants and challenge teachers to devise educational practices that contribute to learning botany. This study presents the results of activities developed in a Brazilian school through explorations, drawings, dried and pressed specimens, and semi-structured interviews. The data were evaluated using mixed methods analysis. Leaves were the structure that was most frequently drawn by 1st- and 2nd-year students, followed by stems. Among students in their 3rd, 4th, and 5th years, more emphasis was on flowers and their detailed morphological structures. The 1st- and 2nd-year students included non-living elements and the surrounding environment in their drawings, whereas the older students focused on the plant itself. These particularities point to methods of teaching botany in context and link students’ specific knowledge to values and practices that contribute to an environmental education that aims to minimize the utilitarian view of nature and move towards a view of human beings as integrated and interdependent with other living and non-living elements.