Integração escola-espaços não formais de educação: utilização de uma abordagem investigativa para o ensino de ecologia

Abstract

The objective of this research was to investigate the contribution of the integrated use – non-formal school education space – Conservation Units – for learning concepts ecology through investigative approach and the light of significant learning. Participated in the search 31 students in the sixth grade of elementary education in a Municipal public school in the city of Natal in Rio Grande do Norte. A education unit potentially significant (LIFO) was designed and implemented using the investigative approach in an interpretative trail at Parque das Dunas in Natal-RN. The concepts of ecology, worked during (LIFO), were selected following the guidelines of the National Curriculum Parameters, contemplating the competencies and skills, contents centrals for the development of concepts, procedures and behaviors. To collect information about students' knowledge before and after the educational intervention used questionnaires, containing questions closed, open and drawings. The answers were analyzed and grouped into categories, with base on the method of content analysis. The analysis showed that the activities developed in the education unit contributed significantly to the learning of conceptual content; procedural, such as, collection, organization, interpretation and reveal of information and behaviors, associated to the topic, Ecology. Regarding the learning of concepts, observed a conceptual evolution in most of them: species, community, ecosystem, biotic factors and abiotic, habitat, ecological niches, food chains, producer, consumer and decomposer. Food chain and decomposition were the concepts that more showed alternative conceptions. The results showed that the use integrated non-formal school space and also the investigative approach represent great potential to motivate, approach the theory of the practice, develop skills to write, argue, making more critical and creative the student, also contributing to overcoming conceptions alternatives.