Objective: To determine the impact of an educational program for primary schools that explored the biodiversity of tomato, by promoting science and sensory education with three distinct varieties of it, in the acceptance of vegetables. Design: A randomized controlled study in which children were exposed to the educational program (intervention group) or remained in the class, as usual (control group). The educational program consisted of three sessions where children explained the observed differences between the three varieties of tomato and individual perceptions of their flavors based on sensory-based food education and by planning and implementing experiments to explain those differences. We tested the effects on both children’s willingness to try and their liking for tomato, and for lettuce and cabbage to study the carry-over effect, compared with the control group (Mann-Whitney U test; p < 0.05). Setting: The study took place in public primary schools in Porto, Portugal. Participants: Children in the third grade (8-13-year-old children) (n 136) that were randomly assigned to intervention or control group. Results: Children in the intervention group reported significant increases in their willingness to try and liking for tomato compared to the control group (p < 0.05), but not for lettuce and cabbage (p > 0.05). Conclusions: These results highlight the potential for fostering children’s acceptance of a vegetable by exploring biodiversity through science education. Further work may clarify the effects of exploring biodiversity on the consumption of vegetables and establish whether the results are stable over time and replicable across contexts and populations.

Abstract. Using digital educational resources (DERs) in science education is an effective way of promoting students' content knowledge of complex natural processes. This work presents the usage of the digital educational resource CreativeLab_Sci&amp;Math | Plate Tectonics, designed for exploring the PhET™ Plate Tectonics simulator, in the context of the education of pre-service teachers (PSTs) in Portugal. The performance of the PSTs was analysed based on the five tasks into which the DER was organized. Results show that the DER contributed to the successful achievement of the following learning outcomes for PSTs: describing the differences between the oceanic crust and continental crust regarding temperature, density, composition and thickness, associating the plate tectonic movements with their geological consequences, and identifying the plate tectonic movements that cause the formation of some geological structures. Results also show that PSTs considered the PhET™ Plate Tectonics simulator a contributor to their learning about plate tectonics.

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On the edge of causing the sixth big mass extinction event, the development of positive attitudes towards the conservation of intraspecific diversity from early ages is essential to overcome the biodiversity crisis we currently face. However, there is no information available on elementary school students' attitudes toward intraspecific diversity conservation nor is there a framework available to perform such analysis. For this study we designed, implemented, and evaluated an educational activity planned for third graders (8 to 13 years old) to explore the intraspecific diversity of vegetables and to promote healthy eating habits. Additionally, a framework was developed to evaluate students' attitudes towards intraspecific diversity conservation and applied to semi-structured interviews conducted with students before and after engaging in the educational activity. In this paper we present a reliable framework, developed aligned with the ABC model of attitudes, based on literature, and adapted to elementary school students' responses, to evaluate students' attitudes toward intraspecific diversity. Our results show that, before the educational activity, most students choose a non-biodiverse option, justifying this choice with the affective component of attitudes: mostly emotional factors but also aesthetic and social/cultural factors. After the educational activity, we observed a significant increase in the frequency of students that choose the biodiverse option and that justified it with the cognitive component of attitudes: mainly with biology and health knowledge factors, but also with economic and ethical knowledge factors. Our findings support the positive impact of educational activities that explore vegetable varieties on students' attitudes toward intraspecific diversity conservation.

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