Selles, S; Boulter, C; Tunnicliffe, SD; Reiss, M; (2005) Pupils' responses to cues from the natural world: a cross-cultural study using multiple analytic perspectives. In: Ergazaki, M and Lewis, J and Zogza, V, (eds.) Trends In Biology Education Research In The New Biology Era. (pp. 15-26). Patras University Press: Rio, Greece.

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Abstract

This paper presents an in-depth analysis and comparison of the understandings of 10/11-year-old pupils in a suburban school in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil with a similar school in suburban Bracknell, in southern England. The research is part of a larger project funded by the Economic Social Research Council in England, reported at ERIDOB 2002 (Boulter et al., 2003a). This larger project determined the extent to which the revealed understandings young people in southern England have of objects in the natural environment depend on the type of research instrument used and the context in which their understandings are probed. It showed significant but small differences using different probes and contexts. An open-ended interview with a photographic probe was used in the first interview in Brazil as in the comparable school in England. In the class in Rio, as in Bracknell the subsequent out-of-school visit was to a zoo where the pupils were interviewed as a group in the presence of the same objects. The pupils were then interviewed, as in Bracknell, orally after the visit. An analysis system using systems theory to develop 8 levels of biological organisation was used to analyse all the interviews both in England and Brazil to show the breadth of responses to the objects from a biological perspective. The interviews using the photographs were further analysed to show aspects of models and human features and influences, to provide an in depth interpretation of the knowledge and experience expressed by both sets of pupils. The results show strong similarities between the case studies in Brazil and in England. The Brazilian students showed a slightly more integrated biological view of the objects in the natural world and more frequent emotional and anthropocentric views as well as a different pattern of responses to particular objects.

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