Teaching of Botany in higher education: representations and discussions of undergraduate students

• João Rodrigo Santos da Silva ^[1] ; Fernando Guimarães ^[2] ; Paulo Takeo Sano ^[3]
  1. [1] Universidade Federal do ABC

     Universidade Federal do ABC

     Brasil

     
  2. [2] Universidade do Minho

     Universidade do Minho

     Braga (São José de São Lázaro), Portugal

     
  3. [3] Universidade de São Paulo

     Universidade de São Paulo

     Brasil

     

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• Localización: REEC: Revista electrónica de enseñanza de las ciencias, ISSN-e 1579-1513, Vol. 15, Nº. 3, 2016, págs. 380-393
• Idioma: inglés
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  • Texto completo (pdf)
• Resumen

  • The teaching of botany is characterised as being taught in a theoretical and uninteresting way for students. The purpose of this work is to discover what students think of the way Botany is taught and their views on the subject. In order to achieve this goal an open questionnaire was presented to the first year undergraduate students studying Biological Sciences. 221 students from 3 different universities filled in the questionnaire. From the results gathered, students in our sample were in favour of a more practical teaching of Botany, and if they were the professors, they would transfer the class into the field after theoretical lessons. This inversion of positions (from student to teacher) brought a modification in the way they feel Botany should be taught, in spite of the players being the same. This article has pointed out that the representation of a concept can vary depending on the subject’s point of view and that it is important to pay close attention to the training of these future Biology teachers.