Teaching native biodiversity: an exploratory study with Brazilian teachers

The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate Brazilian school teacher attitudes and approaches to biodiversity education. We aim to specifically compare the amount of native biodiversity topics as measured by teachers' reports of their teaching emphasis. The study involved 147 teachers from all geographic regions of the country, who answered a questionnaire containing both open- and Likert scale items to compare biodiversity-related contents. Findings reveal that the concepts with the greatest emphasis from teachers are those related to environmental conservation, while the least emphasised concepts are those about Brazilian biodiversity. This seems to lead to a paradox, since conservation-effective actions depend on the place-consciousness of biodiversity. Analysis of responses revealed the following common factors that negatively affect the teaching of native biodiversity: lack of knowledge about local biota; the absence of adequate teaching materials; curriculum geared towards preparing students for national tests; excess of curricular content; and valuation of a macro/general view of biodiversity concepts rather than a native/local view. The implications of our results are important for the training of biology teachers, to improve initial and continued teacher education programmes about native biodiversity.