Investigation of environmental aspects related to the teaching of Zoology for the undergraduate course in Biological Sciences at a Brazilian public university
Biodiversity. Environmental education. Content analysis. Environmental legislation. PNBio. Environmental awareness raising.
Zoology is a branch of the life sciences that has drawn the attention of several researchers involved with aspects of teaching and learning about animal diversity. Considering that Zoology teaching is related to environmental issues, this research seeks to investigate how environmental aspects were evidenced in the course of Zoology teaching to undergraduate students enrolled in the Biological Sciences course at UFRN. Elements of the content analysis methodology systematized by Laurence Bardin were used to visualize these trends, and led to the assembly of a corpus of analysis, from which a subsample was taken totaling 73 published itens including conference papers published in proceedings; book chapters, and articles published in scientific journals. This analysis subsample evidenced contents that enabled the description of four categories of environmental contextualization in the teaching of Zoology, namely: Biodiversity as related to animal diversity, Taxonomic aspects in the study of fauna and the environment, Ecological aspects in the study of animals, and Environmental education as reflected in attitudes toward the fauna. The analysis of the works in the categories highlighted a wide focus on environmental themes, mainly along the Biodiversity discipline, but in this process, legal issues that regulated access to animal diversity in the field were not emphasized. That said, the booklet explores “Aspects of Environmental Legislation that regulate access to biodiversity aimed at teaching Zoology” as an educational product.