Banca de DEFESA: ROSIANE ELVINA SOUSA DE ANDRADE

THE SENSORY GARDEN AS A TEACHING TOOL AND THE MITIGATION OF BOTANICAL BLINDNESS

DSG2030; Teaching Botany; Education for sustainability; Non-Formal Teaching Space.

Responsible for the study of plants, Botany is still seen as a discipline with little
contextualization and with scarce use of didactic resources such as Non-Formal
Teaching Spaces. These notes point to the lack of interest and excitement of
students in Botany classes, since the excessive use of traditional
methodologies is known, such as theoretical, descriptive classes and the use of
technical terms, even leading to the so-called “Plant Blindness”. Faced with this
problem, the main objective of this study was to discuss the aspects that involve
the use of a Sensory Garden as a didactic tool for Teaching Botany and for
mitigating Botanical Blindness in Basic Education students. The research
classified as Field, Action-Research and Qualitative, was applied to 34 Basic
Education students (Elementary School) in two environments: a Formal
Teaching Space and a Non-Formal Teaching Space (Sensory Garden). The
development took place in three phases: a) diagnosis (identification of Botanical
Blindness); b) SD application phase; and c) evaluation and data analysis phase.
It has been verified, so far, that the participants have a certain degree of
Botanical Blindness, where about 85% highlight the presence of architectural
objects and materials on the drawn path and only approximately 26% perceive
the existence of plants on the path in question. The first results are satisfactory
for presenting a method used in the identification of Botany Blindness in an
efficient way, which adds another tool with real possibilities and perspectives to
be used by teachers, enabling new directions for the Teaching of Botany.