Educational meliponaries: contents related to transversal themes and Science teaching

Abstract

This research includes part of the results of a doctoral thesis in Science and Mathematics Education, inserted in a context of training environmental educators. We consider educational meliponaries to be the breeding of stingless bees for pedagogical purposes. Thus, the objective of this work was to present proposals for curricular contents when discussing transversal themes and the science teaching in basic education based on educational meliponaries. Therefore, is a qualitative and descriptive research of the documentary type, in which the transversal themes of national and state curricula were previously analyzed. Among the nineteen transversal themes, we selected eight to work on Environmental Education based on meliponaries: work, science and technology; environmental education; traditional peoples and communities; education for conscious consumption; family and social life; ethics and citizenship; gender, sexuality, power and society; food and nutritional education. Although Environmental Education appears as one of the transversal themes, we assume that it can be linked to all the others, depending on its approach and discussions, in search of an education for sustainability. Finally, for the science teaching, we propose curricular content that can be explored throughout basic education. In total, twenty skills were selected in Elementary School and six skills in High School that can be achieved through classroom discussions about stingless bees.