The use of drawings as a tool to research farmer students’ conceptions about plant-insect ecological relationships and intercultural dialogue

• Main Authors: Jairo Robles-Piñeros, Geilsa Costa Santos Baptista, Eraldo Medeiros Costa-Neto
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul 2018-08-01
• Series: Investigações em Ensino de Ciências
• Subjects: Desenhos; Didática da ecologia; Educação cientifica intercultural; Ensino da ecologia; Relações ecológicas
• Online Access: https://www.if.ufrgs.br/cref/ojs/index.php/ienci/article/view/1033

This article aims to present the importance of using drawings with explanatory texts made by farmer students (non-verbal language associated to verbal language) to teach about the insect-plant relationship based on intercultural dialogue, starting with a study that had as objective to identify and analyze the cultural conceptions of farmer students form a public school of Coração de Maria municipality, state of Bahia, Brazil; toward the insect-plant ecological relationship. Was made a question to the students about what they know into their farmer context about the plants that they cultivate and the insects and, furthermore, they were handed A4 type sheets of paper and colored pencils to represent their knowledge of this ecological relation trough drawings and explanatory texts, which were analyzed since categorizations and induction, dialoguing with science teaching area literature. On these drawings with texts, cultural representativeness and the use of scientific knowledge were sought. The five categories of conceptual understanding proposed by Köse, containing identification of different ecological relationships, were used. The results indicate that the students have knowledge about the insect-plant relationships that are culturally situated in the locality, some of which are close to scientific knowledge. It is concluded that the use of drawings with explanatory texts made by the students themselves serves as a tool to identify their previous conceptions and analyzes how they can be inserted in the teaching and learning processes of ecology in a dialogical and intercultural way.