Abstract

FERREIRA DA LUZ CULPI, Vera Lúcia  and  PEREIRA ALVES, João Amadeus. Introduction of the Water Footprint Theme in Science Education: Perceptions and Perspectives of Changes from the Classroom. Rev. Fac. Cienc. Tecnol. [online]. 2015, n.38, pp.17-36. ISSN 0121-3814.

The inclusion of discussions about water consumptions in Science classes highlights the need of contextualization and expansion of the theme, in particular the need to deal with the theme according to more updated approaches due to the current water crisis lived in Brazil and in many other places around the world so that more profound discussions are carried out in the educational context; examples of this are discussions that focus on water footprint. This article refers to a study which main research question was: how does the use of didactic-methodological strategies based on elements of water footprint contribute to students´ understanding of issues related to the use and water preservation considering the current crisis of this natural resource? This qualitative investigation was carried out at a post-graduate level - Master´s degree - with the participation of 35 (thirty-five) 6^th grade students at a Basic Education school in the city of Curitiba, Paraná state, Brazil. The methodology involved participants and the use of multiple tools for data generation. In order to structure the teaching strategies, before the work in class, a survey was developed about issues related to water, especially students´ perception about the level of water consumption in various contexts (agriculture, industry and by the population in general). The survey supported the design of an investigative questionnaire about how students perceive, relate to and understand aspects related to water resources. In addition to the survey, tools that facilitate the generation of data such as: field diary (similar to memos), participants´ manuscripts and audio recordings were used. From this perspective, content analysis proposed by Laurence Bardin, seemed the appropriate approach for the data analysis, as this method represents a pre-analysis followed by the exploration of the material for later treatment of the data and, finally, the interpretation. The results of this research study demonstrate that students seem to be more reflective and open to discussions about water footprint, so that the use of socio-environmental reports published in newspapers and magazines associated to domestic consumption can be considered an important tool for the debate of socio-scientific themes, such as the current natural resource crisis in Brazil.

Keywords : Didactic-methodological strategies.

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