Inventário etnobotânico: contribuições para o ensino de Ciências intercultural

Abstract

In the classrooms we find a wide variety of subjects and knowledge that are in constant interaction. But, often, this knowledge is not valued or even recognized, being replaced by school scientific knowledge. In teaching Botany, we also observe teaching practices that distance themselves from the reality of our students, although the different relationships that people have with plants are present in their daily lives. Faced with the need to find strategies to improve the teaching and learning process of school knowledge of Botany, we found in Ethnobotany an approach that allows interconnecting the knowledge present among students and scientific school knowledge by focusing on identifying subjects and their knowledge. Identifying, understanding and valuing different types of knowledge from the ethnobotanical approach in the classroom makes it possible to create paths for Intercultural Science Teaching, providing spaces in science classes for a more horizontal dialogue between different types of knowledge. The present work sought to understand how an ethnobotanical inventory, built from the perspective of the Ecology of Knowledge, could contribute to the teaching and learning of intercultural Science. The present research presents a qualitative approach and was developed in a public school of basic education in Uberaba - MG during the first semester of 2022. The study was accomplished in three classes of High School, two classes of the 2nd year of the modality of Basic Education in the afternoon and another 2nd year class of Youth and Adult Education in the evening, involving 42 students. The pedagogical instrument constructed in this research, called “Ethnobotanical Inventory”, was applied for validation purposes in Biology classes in which the researcher is a teacher. As a source of data for our analyses, the textual materials produced by the students during the application of the inventory, recordings of the dialogues and observations of the interactions between the subjects in the activities developed in the classroom are presented. The analysis was developed in three aspects: i) reflection of the researcher teacher regarding the planning and application of the constructed ethnobotanical inventory; ii) knowledge related to plants that students valued and/or recognized in their everyday contexts; and iii) contributions from the ethnobotanical inventory. A great challenge in the construction of the proposal was to integrate into the school context, activities that would stimulate the students' search and interest in bringing something from their daily lives about plants to the classroom, making it necessary to change the typical school activities. We noticed the existence of different popular knowledge about plants present among the students and in their coexistence that the Inventory allowed to investigate, recognize, and value. We also observed that the inventory activities provided a dialogue between non-compartmentalized knowledge such as knowledge learned at school. Intercultural translation movements initiated by some students made possible a better awareness of the incompleteness of knowledge. Finally, the Ethnobotanical Inventory has shown to contribute as long as it focuses on intercultural practices, making the student participative in their own science learning process.