Bridging the gap between formal and non-formal science education: traditional fish markets as a tool to promote ocean literacy

Abstract

Raising awareness on marine environmental issues is crucial to deepen students’ knowledge on ocean sustainability. Nonetheless, ocean-related topics have not been adequately addressed through formal education curricula, thus non-formal learning activities were developed to promote Ocean Literacy among students. These include visits to the local fish market and hands-on activities of fish biological sampling. A mixed methodology with closed and open-self questionnaires and interviews, was used to assess the activities’ effect in student’s learning and to evaluate their implementation and importance. Results showed the activities contribution to the increased learning while promoting a more active citizenship regarding ocean conservancy.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the Agrupamento de Escolas de Alvalade, the council market of Alvalade and all its collaborators, the Parish Council of Alvalade, the City Council of Lisbon for all the logistic support, and the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work had the support of the EEA Grants under Grant PT02_RPS_0006, and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), I.P., under Grants UID/MAR/04292/2019. FCT, I.P. also provided support via researcher contracts to SF and VS in the scope of the Scientific Employment Stimulus Program (CEECIND/02907/2017 and CEECIND/02705/2017, respectively).