The Importance of “Hands-On” Training for Basic and Secondary Level Science Teachers.

Awareness about coastal environments and concerns over its behaviour and evolution has recently become a main issue in several countries around the world which have dealt with rapidly changing coastlines owing to climate change. In Portugal this theme was introduced in curricula of basic and secondary schools, some years ago, highlighting the variety of coastal landforms and their changing patterns. However such as with other subjects, students are quite limited to book contents, and practical coastal observation and monitoring (in a perspective of citizen science) are usually absent from the pupils activities, preventing the schools communities from realizing that they may be part of the solution. With this in mind, the EDUCOAST project, funded by EEAGrants (https://www.eeagrants.gov.pt/en/programmes/blue-growth/projects/projects/educoast/) realized three editions of a training course under the theme “The Coastal Zones: a changing world”, specially conceived for teachers of these levels. It´s a hands-on course that aims to provide teachers with the necessary qualifications in coastal related subjects, contributing to updating of their knowledge and equipping them with field and lab-based teaching skills and tools.

The courses were taught at the Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA) Tavira Station, that lies adjacent to the unique nature-based setting of Ria Formosa lagoonal system (South of Portugal). The 25 hours training focused, in four modules: (i) theorical sessions about morphodynamic characteristics of coastal zones, its evolution from the Last Glacial Maximum to the present day, and the prospective scenarios of its future; (ii) Field work on beach and salt marsh study methods guided by a know-how approach, using alternative methodologies that may be easily used and build by students; (iii) Lab treatment of sediment samples, and observation under binocular microscope; (iv) data processing of the obtained results, including altimetric beach profile and estuarine water parameters survey. Following each training course, participants evaluation was based on a final report corresponding to a field guide and subsequent lab protocols oriented for the students. These reports included direct application in school interdisciplinary activities from the classroom to the field work of STEAM. The final survey to assess the effectiveness of these course show that 100% of the teachers consider the overall formation activities excellent. The quality of teachers final outputs show that they are very enthusiastic, motivated, and even passionate about coastal zones study, when they feel their selves comfortable with field and laboratory methodology, as well as data processing. These activities, undoubtably contributed to the improvement of training, interest, and awareness of teachers in teaching their students about coastal geosciences and it also showed a positive outcome for the continuation of these or similar initiatives between schools and the scientific communities.

This is a contribution of the EDUCOAST (EEAGrants, PT-INNOVATION-0067) and EMSO-PT (PINFRA/ 22157/2016) projects.

This work was funded by the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) I.P./MCTES through national funds (PIDDAC) – UIDB/50019/2020 (https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDB/50019/2020), UIDP/50019/2020 (https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDP/50019/2020) and LA/P/0068/2020 (https://doi.org/10.54499/LA/P/0068/2020).