A utilização da composteira em uma abordagem investigativa no ensino de ecologia

Abstract

Ecology has an important role in teaching Biology and Environmental Education in schools. In high school, ecology is usually approached under the focus of conservationism, limiting its potential for scientific teaching to understand the environment in an integrated way. It is important that students understand how the environment works and how changes in the environment can impact the lives of all living beings. Considering Biology as an experimental science and the difficulties encountered in public schools with the lack of resources and teaching materials that can improve the development of classes by attracting the interest of students, this work used a compost as a teaching resource to address the issue of how an ecosystem works. Issues such as the generation of waste by human activities and its fate were discussed as a proposal of a problem situation to be solved in the context of the investigative approach. The students built two compost pans, took measurements of temperature, humidity and pH, prepared tables and graphs using the data from the measurements, interpreted the graphs and discussed the functioning of the compost pans. Through the practical activity the students interacted with the proposed key concepts that helped in the understanding of the approached theme. The results showed that the strategy used contributed to the development of skills that are part of scientific literacy, such as elaboration of hypotheses, construction of concepts, construction and interpretation of graphics and integration with other curricular subjects such as mathematics, chemistry and geography.