Ocean Literacy, formal education, and governance: A diagnosis of Brazilian school curricula as a strategy to guide actions during the Ocean Decade and beyond
Abstract:Ocean Literacy (OL) was proposed by UNESCO as a goal for the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (Ocean Decade) aiming to (1) increase understanding of the importance of the ocean, (2) significantly influence communication on related subjects, and (3) facilitate informed and responsible decision-making about the ocean and its resources. Formal education is essential to expand the reach of OL, providing people with tools to engage in coastal and marine issues consciously and knowingly. To this e… Show more
“…The significance of incorporating OL principles and concepts into the school curriculum to enhance societal understanding and consciousness of marine environmental issues has been widely acknowledged (Guest et al, 2015; Payne & Zimmerman, 2010; Santoro, Santin, Scowcroft, Fauville & Tuddenham, 2017; United Nations, 2018). Thus, the analysis of school curricula is the first initiative so that the potential and challenges of including these contents are achieved (Pazoto et al, 2021). Despite the acknowledged importance of OL, there has been a paucity of research examining its presence in formal education curricula.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Despite the acknowledged importance of OL, there has been a paucity of research examining its presence in formal education curricula. Two prior studies conducted in Brazil analysed national and regional curriculum documents at the elementary school level, with one study identifying only a small fraction of content related to ocean and marine themes (Pazoto et al, 2021), and the other concluding that only five of the seven OL principles and 14 concepts were represented in the analysed documents (Pazoto et al, 2022). In contrast, our study found that the Brazilian secondary education curriculum incorporates the vast majority of OL principles and concepts.…”
Ocean literacy (OL) proposes to include ocean and marine environment-related content in school curricula. Such a topic has been deemed effective for citizens to develop actions and attitudes towards the health of marine ecosystems. This study aimed to verify the presence and frequency of OL principles and concepts in the Brazilian high school curriculum at the federal (National Curricular Parameters-PCN) and regional (Rio de Janeiro - Curricular Reference-RC) levels. Both PCN and RC contained OL-related content. Moreover, Biology and Geography were the subjects with the highest numbers of OL concepts, both in the PCN (26 and 27, respectively) and in the RC-RJ documents (28 and 24, respectively), while OL concepts were very little represented in History subject. A Mann–Whitney U-test did not indicate statistically significant differences in the number of concepts between PCN and RC-RJ (p = 0.54). A principal component analysis discriminated the documents according to subjects, regardless of their origin (federal or regional). These results provide an unbiased assessment of the relationship between the curriculum and OL in a strongly affected area (Rio de Janeiro State coastal zone [CZ]). Therefore, these results provide valuable support for managers seeking to promote effective CZ management practices and public compliance.
“…The significance of incorporating OL principles and concepts into the school curriculum to enhance societal understanding and consciousness of marine environmental issues has been widely acknowledged (Guest et al, 2015; Payne & Zimmerman, 2010; Santoro, Santin, Scowcroft, Fauville & Tuddenham, 2017; United Nations, 2018). Thus, the analysis of school curricula is the first initiative so that the potential and challenges of including these contents are achieved (Pazoto et al, 2021). Despite the acknowledged importance of OL, there has been a paucity of research examining its presence in formal education curricula.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Despite the acknowledged importance of OL, there has been a paucity of research examining its presence in formal education curricula. Two prior studies conducted in Brazil analysed national and regional curriculum documents at the elementary school level, with one study identifying only a small fraction of content related to ocean and marine themes (Pazoto et al, 2021), and the other concluding that only five of the seven OL principles and 14 concepts were represented in the analysed documents (Pazoto et al, 2022). In contrast, our study found that the Brazilian secondary education curriculum incorporates the vast majority of OL principles and concepts.…”
Ocean literacy (OL) proposes to include ocean and marine environment-related content in school curricula. Such a topic has been deemed effective for citizens to develop actions and attitudes towards the health of marine ecosystems. This study aimed to verify the presence and frequency of OL principles and concepts in the Brazilian high school curriculum at the federal (National Curricular Parameters-PCN) and regional (Rio de Janeiro - Curricular Reference-RC) levels. Both PCN and RC contained OL-related content. Moreover, Biology and Geography were the subjects with the highest numbers of OL concepts, both in the PCN (26 and 27, respectively) and in the RC-RJ documents (28 and 24, respectively), while OL concepts were very little represented in History subject. A Mann–Whitney U-test did not indicate statistically significant differences in the number of concepts between PCN and RC-RJ (p = 0.54). A principal component analysis discriminated the documents according to subjects, regardless of their origin (federal or regional). These results provide an unbiased assessment of the relationship between the curriculum and OL in a strongly affected area (Rio de Janeiro State coastal zone [CZ]). Therefore, these results provide valuable support for managers seeking to promote effective CZ management practices and public compliance.
“…Ocean Literacy, which also guided our activities, already existed in the United States as a movement to incorporate Ocean Sciences-related topics into formal education in the early 2000s [Pazoto et al 2022]. However, Ocean Literacy was only adopted in Brazil in 2019, following the Portuguese release of the book Ocean Literacy for All: A toolkit by UNESCO [Pazoto et al 2021], which discusses the 7 principles that govern the movement. Today, Ocean Literacy is promoted as a goal for achieving the behavioral change expected for the Ocean Decade [Unesco 2021].…”
The present short paper brings a report on gameplay workshops that were held in a municipal public school in the Brazilian city of Niterói, as part of a university-school integration project for the promotion of Ocean Literacy and Heritage Education. Called “Cultural Wave”, the project was thought for helping school students to perceive themselves as sociocultural actors in a city that is historically bonded to the ocean.
“…Topics of ocean literacy and marine science issues are underrepresented areas in the school curriculum and textbooks worldwide (Mokos et al, 2020;Mogias et al, 2021;Mogias et al, 2022). In Latin America, Brazil is taking the first steps to analyze and integrate marine content into the school curriculum, given the international context of the Decade of Oceanic Sciences (Pazoto et al, 2021). In Chile, the only review of marine content in the school curriculum is that of Fanta ( 2021), which analyzed the curriculum bases from preschool to high school, finding the words "sea" and "ocean" only 16 times in the primary and secondary educational cycle, highlighting the weakness of school marine education in Chile.…”
Section: School Science Education In Chilementioning
Although we are currently in the Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development, Chile seems to be lagging behind in marine education. Research has shown the importance of animal imagery in generating a bond between students and their environment, and strengthening interest in conservation. The objective of this study is to contribute to ocean literacy research in Latin America, by describing coverage of ocean content in the Chilean primary school curriculum and textbooks. Content analysis was undertaken concerning textual and pictorial materials. Learning Objectives of the science primary curriculum were reviewed, and the number and type of fauna species shown in images were recorded. For each textbook, we recorded the number of marine and terrestrial animals, categorized endemic, native, and exotic species, and whether the name of the animal was labeled with the image. The results show that only three Learning Objectives of the primary curriculum explicitly define content associated with the ocean. Of the total animal images, slightly more than twenty percent are marine fauna. The great majority of the marine animals shown are native, however, most of the time the image is not reinforced with the name of the species. Considering that school textbooks are the foundation of formal education, this preliminary study indicates that there is a content deficit when teaching about the relevance of the ocean and its animal species in primary school textbooks in Chile, covering only three ocean literacy principles in the science curriculum. However, this study recognizes that important improvements have been made in prioritizing natural science teaching with images of native species.
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