Percepção de alunos sobre anfíbios em uma escola da rede pública do município de Serra do Navio, Amapá, Brasil: desmistificando mitos e lendas

Abstract

The lack of knowledge and erroneous myths about amphibians that are propagated among different generations by a large part of the population, leads many children and young people to be repulsed and afraid of this group of animals. In the present study, we investigated the perception of middle and high school students from Escola Estadual Hermelino Herbster Gusmão, at municipality of Serra do Navio, Amapá state, Brazil regarding amphibians, focusing on the attitudes and knowledge about them. Also, we propose to demystify erroneous myths about amphibians and implement alternative didactic approaches to improve the learning process. For this purpose, we devised an educational intervention through a lesson in which we approach biological aspects, ecological importance and demystify erroneous myths about amphibians, with the aid of lifeless amphibian specimens from didactic collections. We interviewed 35 students from the 6th and 9th grade of elementary school and the 1st year of high school. Questionnaires were conducted before and after the lesson conducted, it comprises a pre and a post-questionnaire to determine the effectiveness of educational intervention. Lastly, we distributed a workbook to be used by the students to interactively learn about amphibians through a ludic method. Our results showed that most students are familiar with amphibians (95%). However, we found a large fraction of students from 6th (60%) and 9th grade (46.1 %) demonstrated a negative perception about amphibians and some students have associated these animals as symbols of misfortune or lucklessness (25,3%), classifying amphibians as dangerous animals. Also, we found most students believed that amphibians are able to expel toxins that make people blind. In conclusion we found that the students, after all the educational process and didactic approaches, changed their conception and could better understand the importance of amphibians on the environment, which helps in the conservation and preservation of these animals in nature.