Ensino de botânica na educação superior: investigação e análise dos obstáculos no processo ensino-aprendizagem em Instituições públicas no Amapá, Brasil.

Abstract

The teaching of Botany still takes place in a traditional and decontextualized way, inducing students to develop little critical thinking, where learning happens in a superficial and mechanical way, which causes difficulties in understanding the contents. This situation is aggravated in undergraduate courses, where more than learning Botany, there is a necessity to learn to teach Botany. The present work had as main objective to identify and analyze the difficulties found by the professors and students in the teaching-learning process of the contents of Botany in Graduation courses in Biological and Natural Sciences offered by public Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the state of Amapá. The data for that research were collected through the application of a questionnaire, containing questions related to the particularities of the course and the interviewed, the problems related to the content and workload, the strategies and didactic resources used for the development of the disciplines of Botany and the suggestions for improvements in Botany teaching. The responses highlight that the teachers present obstacles which limit the teaching practice, especially with regard to the level of botanical knowledge of the incoming academics, the scarcity of didactic material and specific spaces to teach the classes, in addition to the students' lack of interest in the content covered in the disciplines of Botany. The students point out adversities that suppress learning mainly with regard to the didactic strategies applied by the teachers in the teaching of the disciplines, the scarcity of practical classes, the shortage of didactic material and the insufficient workload to study the disciplines of Botany. The results submitted in this survey recommend the requirement to rethink the teaching of Botany in undergraduate courses in Biological and Natural Sciences, specifically with regard to strategies and teaching methodological procedure when teaching the disciplines of Botany, with the need for a restructuring associating the pedagogical content that touches Botany with the reality of each HEI, in front of its academics and the environment that surrounds them.