Abstract:

Biodiversity is recurrently approached by the media and is present in the curriculum of different school years. The importance of biodiversity is also present in The Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by the United Nations in 2015.

However, the concept of biodiversity is more complex than the simple decomposition of the term would suggest and its meaning has changed during time. According to Miller & Spoolman (2021), biodiversity includes the variety of species, genetic variability within the individuals of each species, variety of ecosystems and ecological functions essential for life to continue, as energy flow and matter cycling. This last factor is frequently omitted in lower levels of schooling, perhaps due to its complexity. Also relevant are the reasons why biodiversity is important, and it is normally accepted that human actions are responsible for its destruction. These reasons are frequently related to three different perspectives: anthropocentrism, which tends to assess all human actions based on its positive impact on human life; biocentrism, which highlights the benefits for life in general; ecocentrism, which stresses the evolutionary processes on earth and gives importance to the balance of nature.

The present study involved 84 primary school pre-service teachers from a Portuguese institution, who will start their professional activity in the coming school year. Ecological concepts are part of the learning aims for this level of schooling, including biodiversity. So, it is important to assess how these future teachers are prepared to deal with this subject. Therefore, a questionnaire was administered with the following open questions:
1) What is biodiversity?;
2) Why is biodiversity important?;
3) Please mention a concrete area in Portugal rich in biodiversity;
4) What human actions can destroy biodiversity?

The results showed that none of the respondents was able to define biodiversity correctly, even when only considering the three first dimensions mentioned above. The majority tended to associate biodiversity with the variety of living beings or the variety of ecosystems. The variation among the beings of the same species was completely absent. Even so, they stated the importance of biodiversity more consistently: more than half the respondents gave ecocentric reasons, based on the need to keep the balance of the ecosystems or the connection between species; anthropocentric reasons were hardly mentioned, since only a few highlighted the importance of biodiversity to the quality of human life. The great majority of the participants mentioned national or nature parks as the examples of places rich in biodiversity, but aquatic ecosystems were practically absent. Some human made places, like urban parks or historical places with exotic vegetation were also mentioned, albeit with much less frequency. Finally, the main human actions stated as responsible for the destruction of biodiversity were fires and different types of pollution. With a low frequency were activities such as animal production, mineral extraction, hunting, fishing and main communication routes, for instance.

To conclude, pre-service teachers have a few correct ideas about biodiversity, but it is recommended to coverage the topic during their training, to improve their understanding of the subject.

Keywords:

Concept of biodiversity, Importance of biodiversity, Destruction of biodiversity, Teacher training.