Reflexões sobre o ensino de anatomia vegetal: formação, prática e obstáculos conceituais na perspectiva do professor.

Abstract

Brazil hosts the greatest plant biodiversity on the planet, with approximately 60,000 species distributed across different biomes, playing essential roles in ecosystems and human life. Despite the extensive scientific knowledge about the national flora, there is a gap between this knowledge and its effective integration into Botany education, which is often addressed in a fragmented and poorly contextualized manner. This gap contributes to so-called “plant blindness,” hindering the appreciation of plants and the development of critical environmental awareness. This dissertation investigated the role of initial and continuing teacher education in improving the teaching of Botany, with an emphasis on Plant Anatomy, in basic education. It analyzed conceptual obstacles faced by Biology teachers, alumni, and students of a professional master’s program in Biology Teaching at a federal public university in Belém, Pará. The research involved 60 primary and secondary school teachers and used an online questionnaire structured around three axes — Initial Training, School Practice, and Conceptual Obstacles — analyzed through Content Analysis. The study is composed of two articles: the first, “Teaching Plant Anatomy in Basic Education: Issues of Teacher Training and Practice in Botany Teaching,” discusses the relationship between teacher education and pedagogical practice; the second, “Conceptual Obstacles in Plant Anatomy among Biology Teachers — How Long Will We Ignore Them?” examines major conceptual difficulties, their implications for teaching, and strategies for improvement. Both studies converge on a central diagnosis: the teaching of Plant Anatomy in basic education remains constrained by persistent conceptual obstacles, a predominantly traditional and memorization-based teacher education, and didactic procedures that rely heavily on textbooks — often marked by gaps and inaccuracies. Within this context, teachers enter the classroom with limited conceptual and didactic confidence, tending to reproduce expository methodologies that are insensitive to the complexity of the subject and students’ experiences. At the same time, evidence of professional growth emerges: investment in continuing education, adoption of diversified methodologies, and creative use of material resources to reconfigure the learning experience in Botany into something meaningful and socially grounded. This research contributes to the development of formative and pedagogical frameworks for teaching Plant Anatomy and to teacher education policies, encouraging the articulation between theory and practice through meaningful, contextualized, and interactive methodologies that strengthen botanical education and environmental awareness.