A Etnobotânica como instrumento pedagógico para ensino de botânica na educaçao basica / Ethnobotanics as a pedagogical instrument for botanical teaching in basic education

Abstract

Botany is one of the areas of biology that teachers find it most difficult to teach. Since plants are generally taught with a focus on reproductive systems, without historical context, in addition to being among the contents of lesser domain and interest for a good part of biology teachers in basic education. It is worth emphasizing the importance of understanding the concept of botanical blindness in order to understand such complexities. This is based on the difficulties in understanding that vegetables are living beings; lack of understanding of the structures and complexities inherent in them; and this can be reinforced by the media, when, for example, in a certain landscape the vegetation is seen as part of the environment and only the animals are described, named and observed. Thus, with the aim of improving the teaching-learning process of botany, an Ethnobotany survey was carried out with second-year high school students from the private school Colégio e Curso Ícaro, Recreio dos Bandeirantes Unit, Rio de Janeiro, in which students were the researchers. At first, they answered a questionnaire based on the concept of botanical blindness, in order to ascertain their knowledge of plants. Afterwards, the students were divided into pairs and each of them had two weeks to choose a person to interview from their family, friend or neighbor. After choosing, a structured script of questions was created in the classroom. The pairs had a month to conduct the interviews based on the script and also took pictures of at least two species. Afterwards, students were assisted in botanical identification through the use of botanical nomenclature such as (IPNI 2018), access to the virtual herbarium of the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden (REFLORA 2018), the Flora do Brasil website (2020) and the website "Species Link" (INCT 2018), to compare with deposited exsiccates. And finally, each pair had to present the results to the class. To assess whether through this activity, students gained significant knowledge of botany, they answered a questionnaire to find out what they thought of the research and whether they had improved their learning about plants. Based on the initial and final questionnaire, in addition to the class's performance, it was possible to conclude that there had been advances in the general understanding of plants, as well as in interest.