Aquaponia: uma ferramenta didática para formação inicial e continuada de professores de ciências

Abstract

Educators have shown an increasing interest to verify how the learning processes in schools can be better contextualized so as to be more accessible and useful to students. In this sense, activities related to Agricultural Sciences offer options for the various areas of science that can serve as significant contexts for teaching and learning, improving the performance of the students, also presenting non-academic results such as personal development, cooperation and environmental awareness. In this context Aquaponics is an agro-food production system that integrates the cultivation of plants without a substrate with the cultivation of aquatic organisms, in a symbiotic relationship between these two components and the microorganisms present in the environment, where the residual nutrients of fish culture are transformed by the bacteria into absorbable products by the plants, which favors their development. Thus, the use of aquaponics in lessons incorporates knowledge of a variety of subjects, including agriculture, biology, engineering, nutrition, chemistry, and technology, since the application and maintenance of the system offers teachers the opportunity to incorporate the system into their lesson plans across a wide variety of disciplines. Aiming to understand how a practical project could help middle school teachers with their subjects, this dissertation was divided in two parts, where the first one was used to verify how the aquaponic system can contribute to the initial formation of science teachers and the second part which aims on the continuing training of teachers that are already active science areas. The results confirm the contribution of the aquaponic system to the initial training of future biology teachers; the importance and intrinsic interdisciplinarity of the system; and the possibility of planning, acting and implementing curricular techniques and practices which are different from those used in the classroom. And they reveal the positive change in the behavior of the students in teaching-learning moments. For the continued training of teachers, the availability of time is a crucial element to stimulate educators to modify their teaching methodologies, incorporating new techniques and favoring interdisciplinarity. We see that the diversification of classes through the use of the system holds students' attention and motivates them to interact with teachers.