A contribuição da Etnobiologia para o Ensino de Biologia: Uma análise com base em dissertações e teses (2008 – 2020)

Abstract

This paper is the result of years of research in the field of Ethnobiology, which associated with the interest in teaching, it issues a promising approach to the resignification of the teaching practice of biology. Ethnobiology is important for a significant scientific training and may be present in the teaching process as a way to instigate students’ curiosity regarding biology content. This study aims to answer the question “what has been produced in postgraduate courses on teaching biology from an ethnobiological perspective?”, by making a qualitative analysis of theses and dissertations produced between 2008 and 2020, whose focus of investigation is the influence of Ethnobiology in the teaching of Biology. This research is classified as bibliographic, and for data collection we used the database of dissertations and theses from the Coordination for Higher Education Improvement of Personnel (CHEIP)1 and the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and dissertations (BDLTD)2 of Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology (BIIST)3. With the use of descriptors, we made an initial survey of 720 and 1,719 works, respectively. By examining titles and abstracts we selected 45 researches for a thorough reading, and 23 of them fit the general theme of this research: “Ethnobiology and biology teaching”. We noticed that between the years 2015 and 2019 there was a more intense academic investigation on the topic. In addition to that, we could also observe that most of the productions focused on “the communication between the scientific knowledge and the popular knowledge”. Among the didactic sequences perused, we found several methodological strategies such as reports and interviews, videos and photographs, Jigsaw and STEAM development. Most of the works were characterized as qualitative, and most of the biological contents addressed are related to Environmental Education with a CTSA approach. The results bring forward a reflection on what we have accomplished as teachers in our classrooms, and may serve as an incentive to future research on teaching biology considering different perspectives.