What happens to the boats? A look into tsunami and earthquakes geoscientific literacy

• Autor(a) principal: Vasconcelos, Clara
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Outros Autores: Costa, Joana, Almeida, António, Moura, Rui
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.21/11637
• topic: Boats; Tsunami; Geoscientific literacy

During the twentieth century almost two million people were killed by earthquakes. When the frequency of earthquakes of great magnitude is on a scale of hundreds of years this contributes to erasing the collective memory. This view may seem contradictory, given that the Lisbon earthquake, which occurred on November 1, 1755, still seems to be an event that persists in the collective memory, may be due to the peculiar characteristics of this event, such as the great magnitude of the earthquake, the tsunami and fire, theft and destruction of emblematic places of temporal and spiritual power, especially the churches. The main objective of this study was to evaluate Portuguese citizens’ scientific literacy about tsunamis. For this purpose, we conducted 206 structured interviews in a public place, asking people for their collaboration. In the beginning of the interviews people were shown a drawn scenario with a tsunami epicentre and three boats localized in different places of the ocean. The sample was constituted by 107 females (51,94%) and 99 males (48,06%), with ages ranging from 12 to 85. The interviews, which were conducted by two members of the research team, were audio taped for a better and more reliable transcription. Content analysis was subsequently done with the help of the Q.S.R. NVivo 10 qualitative data analysis package. Interviews contain three main questions that intend to evaluate citizens’: (i) understanding about tsunamis and its consequences based on the boats possible scenario; (ii) knowledge about tsunamis that occurred in the country and (iii) opinions concerning the inclusion of themes related to tsunamis mitigation and prevention in basic and middle schools science curricula. Results showed that only 42,7% of respondents gave a correct answer to question number 1, revealing some knowledge concerning the phenomenon and its consequences. Regarding the question number 2, the majority of respondents (60,2%) do not reveal any knowledge about the tsunami that reached the Portuguese coast. Concerning the last question, the bulk of respondents considered fundamental to include topics related to tsunamis mitigation and prevention in science curricula. Although the majority recognize the need to know about these issues, answers revealed a lack of knowledge regarding tsunamis, especially those related to tsunamis that occurred in the past. In general terms, it seems that gender does not influence the answers. On the other hand, the age of respondents seems to influence some results.