The predinatur project: educational resources for promoting pupils’ contact with nature

• Autor(a) principal: Almeida, António
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Outros Autores: Rodrigues, Margarida, Fernández, Beatriz García
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.21/7617
• topic: Contact with nature; Educational resources; Primary school; IPL/2016/PREDINATUR_ESELx

The PREDINATUR project began in 2017 with the purpose of promoting the contact of pupils of primary school with nature. As a result of an increasingly urban experience and the use of technological devices in indoor settings, children today are moving away from the natural world. School can help to counteract this trend by promoting pupils' contact with nature. But with their focus on learning, teachers do not always have educational resources to promote outdoor activities. Thus, this project aims to support the visitation of natural areas in Portugal and Spain and to stimulate similar projects. To this end, a website was created for free dissemination of educational resources. The first resources were designed by pre service teachers from two higher education institutions, respectively for Lagoa Pequena, Portugal (Natura 2000 under the Birds and Habitats Directives of European Union), and for Las Tablas de Daimiel National Park, Spain (a wetland on the La Mancha plain). At this stage, the three resources made available online for Lagoa Pequena (a small lagoon that is included in the Albufeira Lagoon) have already been tested by 16 teachers and 65 pupils of the 6th grade of schooling (ages 10 to 12) from two different schools. From the results of this assessment, the user teachers emphasized their integrative character and the use of digital resources as very motivating for the pupils. However, a few suggested, for instance, the inclusion of more questions directed to get information from the outdoor panels and the discussion of the more complex activities at the end of the visit. These and other suggestions will be addressed in the reformulation process of the resources. The pupils highlighted positively the use of the digital resources and a few criticized the fact that some activities have a lot of maths included. Some disturbing factors during the visit were also mentioned, especially by the pupils of one of the schools, like the weather conditions and the presence of stinging plants and insects, affecting their enjoyment of the place and attention during the activities. In the near future, the project intends to design other educational resources for natural areas also obeying to the cycle of test and reformulation, and to provide the website available in three languages (Portuguese, Spanish and English), to facilitate the exchange of ideas related to the present issue among the research community.