Blivande lärares uppfattningar och förståelse av baskunskap i ekologi i Danmark, Finland och Sverige

Abstract

Students' and student teachers' decreasing interest in and knowledge of science are, according to many national and international assessments, alarming trends in the Nordic countries. This quantitative and qualitative study of student teachers' knowledge of core concepts and processes in ecology confirms the low level of student teachers' understanding of these issues, although a majority consider these issues to be basic knowledge for their teacher competencies. Many of the student teachers did not know what biosphere or succession is. They also had difficulties in explaining what a seed contains and what its role is in the plant's lifecycle. Several student teachers also had difficulties to explain why photosynthesis is important and how it works. The increasing ecological and environmental illiteracy is discussed as one of the implications for teacher education.

Systems Thinking for Understanding Sustainability? Nordic Student Teachers’ Views on the Relationship between Species Identification, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development

“…According to previous research [28,29,33], knowledge of species and species identification skills are important factors in developing people's interest in environmental issues and sustainability. Furthermore, an understanding of ecological key concepts, such as biodiversity, helps people to see and understand more complex relationships in natural systems [36,37], especially if also well-known species [32,33] and nature experiences are included [34,35,86]. People's ability to identify the separate components in ecological sustainability however, is only a starting point.…”

“…On the other hand, there are several reports of teacher education programmes that totally lack, or have only few, sustainability subjects [12][13][14]87,88]. The student teachers' low level of systems thinking in ecological sustainability also reflects minor volumes of nature studies and ecological aspects among the more extensive pedagogical and other subject studies in teacher education [37,44,70,72].…”

“…An understanding of ecological key concepts and processes helps people to see more complex relationships in the natural and human systems [36,37]. Unfortunately, the level of people's knowledge of species has decreased significantly during the past 20 years [28,29,[38][39][40][41].…”

“…Unfortunately, the level of people's knowledge of species has decreased significantly during the past 20 years [28,29,[38][39][40][41]. At the same time, also their knowledge of ecological key concepts and understanding of ecological processes have decreased [37,[42][43][44] to such an extent that the phenomenon has been referred as ecological illiteracy [36,45,46].…”

“…The fact that Nordic student teachers possess low levels of species identification [29] and ecological knowledge [37] makes it interesting to study how they think about the relationship between species identification, biodiversity and sustainable development.…”