Proposal for teaching zoological diversity through a phylogenetic approach
Design research; Teaching of zoology; Phylogeny; Didactic sequence.
In face of difficulties presented by zoology teaching, educational novelties that favor and stimulate learning about the diversity of living beings are more than welcome. Among several proposals and researches on this field, for quite some years, systematic phylogeny figures frequently in scientific papers and also has been included in Science textbooks. Systematic phylogenetics is a methodology of reconstruction ancestry relations of livings beings that can be used to aid teaching of evolution in secondary classrooms. This approach was used in a didactic sequence for teaching zoology with an evolutionary approach without recurring to algorithms but using basic concepts in order to promote a general idea of the relationship between studied groups along with evolutionary and embryological concepts, mainly common ancestry. We consider that the inclusion of this approach, focusing on evolutionary concepts, can aid teaching about zoological diversity. The teaching sequence was developed and applied by a teacher-researcher collaborative group of Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) and secondary teachers of Colégio da Polícia Militar – Dendezeiros in the city of Salvador, Bahia State, Brazil. We used the theoretical and methodological framework of Design Research throughout our study. Data collection comprised quantitative and qualitative aspects by means of questionnaires and transcriptions of classroom episodes. Results suggest that the didactic sequence had positive effects on evolution, zoology and phylogeny learning corroborated by statistical test. Even though there are strong evidences of content learning, this teaching sequence presents challenges and questionings that could be solved in new prototypes since the intervention is in fact suited for generalization allowing other biology teachers and researchers to make their own adjustments and prototypes according to their teaching contexts.