Challenges and prospects for teaching ocean literacy in Brazilian schools

Abstract

This study took as a case study the perspective of teachers working in the State of Rio de Janeiro by 53 interviews to investigate the challenges and prospects of including content about the ocean in Brazilian school classrooms. The data were subjected to content analysis and explored quantitatively using Descending Hierarchical Classification (DHC) and Factor Correspondence Analysis (FCA) of word and terms used by teachers in their discourse. The main difficulties reported in including themes related to the ocean and marine environments in classes were the absence of OL in the school curriculum and university education, as well as the limited time to work on these subjects in classes, which is in line with the challenges faced by teachers from other countries. On the other hand, Brazilian teachers cited particular problems of Brazilian formal education, such as the need for professional development, support for an education with an interdisciplinary emphasis, and provision of financial resources for schools. However, DHC analysis also indicates strong connection of the teachers with the ocean due to sea fascination (24% of the answers in the textual corpus), spiritual and emotional connection (26.7%), leisure (22.7%) and professional interest (26.7%). Furthermore, the textual corpus also identified that teachers recognize the importance of teaching marine topics due to: students live in coastal areas (32.2%), the provision of ecosystem services (19.9%), preservation issues (34.2%), and limited student knowledge on these themes (13.7%). These data can help formulate educational policies to mitigate OL teaching barriers in Brazilian schools.