Abstract
Understanding pupils’ biodiversity perspectives is essential to developing educators’ sensitivity to students’ multi-faceted views of the world, thus increasing teaching effectiveness. In this study, we asked 1528 school pupils in the Azores to choose between alternative schemes in three ecological scenarios and to justify their decisions. The study’s objectives were to understand biodiversity perspectives underlying pupils’ choice of the most desirable schemes for nature and to examine whether gender and school level (middle school/high school) influenced their choices. Quantitative (frequency analysis and Chi-square statistics) and qualitative (thematic analysis) methods were applied for data analysis. The majority of pupils made appropriate choices, arguing from different biodiversity perspectives, which were classified in 10 categories and 24 subcategories. High school pupils did not exhibit significant differences among the main arguments employed, and mostly referred to ecological concepts, while middle school pupils exhibited different choices according to gender, emphasizing richness over the threats posed by introduced species. Biodiversity education should thus be strengthened, especially at the middle school level, where different complex issues would benefit from classroom discussion and systematization. The chosen methodological strategy proved to be effective in assessing pupils’ biodiversity perspectives, which may be useful to deal with other ill-structured problems.
Highlights
Given the increasing loss of biodiversity and destruction of ecosystems worldwide, appropriate environmental management to achieve biological conservation is an important global issue that needs urgent attention [1]
It is increasingly recognized that decisionmaking in environmental management should be participatory and transparent, and that the participation of stakeholders is beneficial to the quality and fairness of environmental conservation decisions [2,3]
Considering that environmental conservation demands that decisions are made, even when faced with uncertainties [4,40], it is important to explore whether pupils, as future full citizens, are able to make appropriate environmental choices, and which perspectives they resort to [41]
Summary
Given the increasing loss of biodiversity and destruction of ecosystems worldwide, appropriate environmental management to achieve biological conservation is an important global issue that needs urgent attention [1]. It is increasingly recognized that decisionmaking in environmental management should be participatory and transparent, and that the participation of stakeholders is beneficial to the quality and fairness of environmental conservation decisions [2,3]. Participatory decision-making in environmental management is a complex process, in which there is no clear solution or a single right answer, and where trade-offs between the interests and priorities of multiple stakeholders have to be made [4,5]. To participate as full citizens in environmental management decision-making, people should be ecologically literate, which implies being capable of assessing scientific ecological claims and understanding key ecological concepts and processes, as well as comprehending the interconnectedness between ecological systems and human activities [4,7,8,9]. Ecological literacy involves the ability to properly apply knowledge to make informed decisions regarding environmental management [7,10]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call