Abstract:

The teaching of the urgency to preserve the tree because it is the living being that is the basis of the biosphere food webs constitutes the pedagogical objective of Natural Sciences subject at any level of education. However, the current society continues to face serious environmental problems, in which the destruction of forests and the lack of caring for the tree as a living being is main issue. People need to protect them. The articulation between science-technology-society-environment has many pedagogical approaches. However, the development of science teaching-learning process that promotes citizens pro-environmental attitudes and practices continues to be a challenge. It is in this context that our research problem is based. How to teach the concept of tree as living being in order to (re) construct the tree potentialities conception as part of students ecocentric competences development? The objective is: to evaluate the learning effectiveness that happens when the exploration of photographs vs thermograms (obtained by the infrared thermography) is carried out to (re) construct the concept of tree as living being. We adopted the action-research approach focused on the teaching-learning process. A pedagogical-didactic intervention was structured, applied and evaluated. The target group is students attending the Natural Sciences subject of Primary Education Course of an institution of higher education in Portugal. We chose demonstration and diagnosis evaluation as teaching strategy. The photographies and thermograms of a tree and the wooden stake that holds the tree were used as didactic resources. The first is alive, the other is not alive. These resources were presented and the interactive dialogue was used to explore them. The results indicate that the didactic resources used in this intervention present great didactic potential in the construction of the ecocentric conception applied to the tree. After the didactic exploration, it was observed that the students developed a reflexive argument about the preoccupation with these living beings. They emphasized the importance of the images obtained through thermography for the construction of this new view in relation to the tree.

Keywords:

Technology-enhanced learning, infrared thermography, educational research, living being, tree, environmental education, sustainability.