Abstract:

Ocean Literacy defined as the understanding of how dependent we all are on the marine ecosystems and how those depend on our attitudes constitutes a challenge for all society members, including science educators. This is aligned with the sustainable development goals (SDG) to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education’ (SDG 4), providing students with the knowledge and skills necessary to promote a more sustainable society and ‘conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development’ (SDG14).

In this study an App developed under a research project in science education was used by pre-service teachers as a technological resource for their learning, including an outdoor experience in a marine protected coastal ecosystem, the rocky shore of Avencas. The App enabled the pre-service teachers to do discovery itineraries, which involved a set of "exploration stations", related to the biodiversity of this shore, characteristic adaptations of the resident species, ecological species interactions, and human use and influence on this habitat.

In order to assess how this experience and the technological resource contributed to pre-service teachers learning, a mixed methodology was applied using questionnaires, focus group interviews, and content analysis of the works produced by pre-service teachers during the activity. Results of this investigation enabled to evaluate the importance of this resource for higher education courses training.

Acknowledgement:
The project (FA_06_2017_011) is funded by Fundo Azul (Direção-Geral de Política do Mar).

Keywords:

Science education, technological resource, higher education, pre-service teachers, ocean literacy.