What do Brazilian School Children Know about Birds in Their Country?

Children have a basic knowledge of birds that they observe during their everyday life either in their garden, other gardens, round the house, walking in the local area or in the yard on school gardens. A total of 515 children, aged 3 to 16 (249 girls and 266 boys) enrolled in southern Brazilian public preschools, primary school and secondary schools, were invited to participate in this exploratory study. A semi-structured interview was conducted with 206 pupils asking to name which birds they knew, where they had seen these birds, which ones live around home, which they had seen further away. Additionally, they were asked which birds they knew from a list and the source of this knowledge where they had learned about the birds. They were asked to draw on a sheet of paper a representation of what the word “bird” meant to them. Results show the importance of everyday observations rather than beyond formal education in the children knowledge. Children from the earliest years notice birds in their everyday lives, and build a bank of knowledge, gradually acquiring an understanding of adaptation to a variety of habitats. Children notice birds in their lives to differing extent and sources according to the culture in which they are immersed. Experiences of seeing or finding out about birds are encapsulated for many children in the form of narratives and contribute to their mental models of birds and their habitats on which they will drew in formal science later (Biology and Environmental Education). Educational implications are discussed.


Introduction
It is often said that young children and el ementary school children are out of touch with wildlife (Louv, 2008). Bird observation only recently has been adopted in elementary school as a strategy to improve environmental and pres ervation education, as it stimulates pupils observations of organisms in the natural world and develops res pect of the quality of the environments they live in and raises awareness about biodiversity (Vielliard, 2000). Thus, identification of morphological features, for instance beak shapes and bird popular names should be explored and known.
Surveys hav e indicated that there are 1, 825 bird species which 234 are endemic to Brazil (Perlo, 2009). There are a series of Brazilian ornithological and obs ervation studies of birds from Paran| State such as Scherer-Neto and Straube, (1994), Westcoot et al., (2002), Gimenes et al., (2007), Volpato et al., (2009) , Straube, (2013). Some studies relate bird watching and ludic activities for the teaching of primary school science and environment education in Mato Grosso State, Brazil (Nogueira et al., 2015). Other studies are related to geographical distribution of birds from Saint Catarina State as for example Ros|rio, (1996; and from Rio Grande do Sul State (Meller, 2011) as well as from São Paulo State (Hofling and Camargo, 2002), Lav ras, Minas Gerais State (Braga et al., 2010) respectively from southern and southeastern Brazil. Field guides provide information for the distributions of birds in South America respectively in Argentinian Patagonia and Antarctica e. g. Laguna Nimez and Bahia Redonda (Beccaceci, 2010;Fern|ndez, 2010).
There are a large number of educational media besides textbooks av ailable to teach children and adolescents about birds, as for instance, "eyewitness guides" (Burnie, 1990;Sipinski, 2009). However, usually the textbook is the only source of knowledge about birds in Brazil referred to in formal education. Rarely do the textbook deals with birds of children´s daily lives, regional distribution of bi rd species, bird song, bird watching, as means to improve formal science education. However, the textbook is still an important tool to support teachers when preparing and teaching classes in all levels of natural sciences teaching and learning (Frison et al., 2009).
Children are innately interested in living things, identifying, classifying, and seeking patterns especially on animals including birds (Evans, et al., 2006;Tomki ns and Tunnicliffe, 2007;Reiss andTunnicliffe, 1999, Bartoszeck andTunnicliffe, 2017). However, children have partial knowledge from spontaneous observations and experiences in their local everyday environment and l essons at school, but not necessarily gained from formal education (Tunnicliffe and Reiss, 1999;Patrick et al., 2013). Although there are research studi es on certain animals, or animals in general, plants and their classification, our knowl edge of early years children´s knowledge of birds is limited (Whitin and Whitin, 1996;Buchholz, 2000;Gatt et al., 2007;Patrick and Tunnicliffe, 2011;Tunnicliffe, 2012).
In the pre-school years for pupils aged 3 to 5 natural science is poorly covered in Brazilian kindergarten curricula and papers in this area are scarce (Straube and Viei ra -da-Rocha, 2006;Tozzo, 2011;Moura and Vasconcelos, 2011). However, in other culture, Slovaki an pupils showed ability to i dentify birds which bi rds local Noah's ark types as penguin, ostrich, pigeons (Prokop et al., 2007). Brazilian school children have a limited knowledge of Brazilian birds and are left behind in environment education and a lack of knowledge on biodiversity. A survey indicated that by the age range of 5 to 6 year age, they spontaneously said they know the canary (can|rio -da-terra, Sicalis flaveo la), parrot (Brotogeris ciriri), humming-bird (Eupeto mena macroura, Amazilia fimbriata), wood-pecker (pica-pau-do campo, Colaptes campestris), pigeon (Columba picazuro), owl (coruja-buraquei ra, A thene cunicularia), and southern lapwing ( quero-quero, Vanellus chilensis) , whereas in the range age of 10 to 14 year age they mentioned the Poroaria dominicana (galo da campina), Thraupis sayaca (sanhaçu), Sporophila albogularis (golinha), Cyanocompsa brissonii (azulão) as the most referred to ).
Children aged 10 to 14 years (primary school) drew coloured drawings depicting simple outlines of what they think is a bird and additionally birds feet and beak as well were mentioned. An anA analysis of these drawings indicated that these children knew 51 names of local Northeas tern Brazilian birds, but there is no information related to this issue in Southtern Brazil. Silva and Bartoszeck, 2011). Analysis of the drawings to elicit the mental model children had of a bird following the perspective of Luquet´s "intellectual realism" through this drawing which is an expressed model (Luquet, 1927(Luquet, /1979. Drawings are representations of children´s ideas, knowledge and impressions of a biological topic (Anning and Ring, 2004;Cox, 2005). In fact, they draw their mental models as they attempt to diagram what they "see" in their mind. Models are iconic i. e. their parts represent visual images (Glyn, 1997;Goswami, 2008).
It is through what we find children know about birds mental models expressed in the bird drawings we wanted to elicit from a sample collected in southern Brazil pre-school, primary school and secondary school pupils (Boulter andBuckley, 2001, Rapp, 2007). Through analyzing the content of the drawings we hoped to find out what children thought they knew about birds.
There is a scarcity of studies on pupils´ ideas about birds in environmental education in Brazil. Argel -de-Oliveira, (1996) and Oliveira and Soares, (2013) hi ghlighted that bird watching can be carried out even wi thout expensive equipment in school backyard, nei ghborhood streets, city lawns, home garden. It is not necessary organize expensive and risky field trips to rural areas as urban birds will provide basic information towards environmental education for school age pupils.
People from urban cities do know about birds. Straube and Vi eira -da-Rocha, (2006) interviewed 630 adul ts in a main street downtown Curi tiba, southern Brazil and this sample provided 72.6% mentions of mostly endemic popular names of bird exemplars. Farias and Alves, (2007) hi ghlighted the importance to study local (Northeastern Brazil) bi rds by means of ethno-ornitology collecting data from participant observation. Sousa & Freitas, (2000) collected 233 ques tionnaires from pupils (12 to 15 year olds in Portugal and found the most important features to identify bird were colour, beak shape, feathers and l ess important singi ng. These pupils identified 33 different urban exemplars and 44 wild birds by popular names. Gaspar, (2008) i nvestigated the awareness of birds of 60 preschoolers from different locations in Portugal. Ci ty children were less able to list bird characteristics, exemplars, and to imitate bird songs than other localities. Prokop and Rod|k, (2009) inves tigated the res ponse of 110 11 to 12 year olds in Slovaki a and found bird song and growth were main features used in identification.
Learning about birds endemic to where pupils live is part of their l earning about environmental/conserv ation education. However, pupils of all age range seen to hav e difficulties in classifying animals, including, birds (Prokop et al., 2007). Studies report pupils and students bi rd misconceptions at secondary and college levels respectively ( Kubiatko et al., 2011;Cartak, 2009). More recently there is some research i nvestigating what are the attitudes and myths expressed by adol escents related to birds in Slovakia and countries with different levels of economic development, for example Colombia in South America (Prokop et al., 2008;Hummel et al., 2015).

Rationale
Bird observation is an establish practice in Europe and US as a hobby, but it is mainly carried out by biologist and specialist ornithologist in Brazil (Costa, 2006). O nly recently, has the activity has been adopted in elementary school as a strategy to improve environmental education for children as it was usually carried out as a ludic experience (Allenspach and Zuin, 2013;Grossi, 2017). It stimulates the capacity of pupils´ observation of organism in the natural world and the development of respect and preservation of the quality of the environment where they live in. Identification of morphological features related to feed habi ts and popul ar names were explored as well as colour selection, bird aspects and drawings (Vieira-da- Costa and Molin, 2008;Ahi, 2016). We know from res earch in other countries (as listed earlier) that children do notice local animals in thei r immedi ate environments. Hence we decided to elicit such potential knowledge amongst some Brazilian children. We formulated the following questions.

Research questions
This introductory study aims to explore the following questions:  What do Brazilian school children gender and age know about the Brazilian birds?
 How a s ample from southern Brazilian preschool and primary schools represent the external morphology of a bird by means of a drawing;  Whether there is any difference by age and gender in unders tanding of how a representation of a bird is depicted according to a rubric scale of levels achieved;  Which are the resources of bird knowledge prompted in interviews;

Methodology
The goal of this exploratory study is to ascertain what children across the age range of 3 to 16 years old think intuitively as the word "bi rd' is heard, where that source was acquired and what, if any, socio cul tural influences affected their ideas. We asked Brazilian school children from this sample (N=515, 249 females and 266 males) to draw what they think are the external features of a bird whose ages and gender are shown in Table 1. Then we analysed the mental models of a bi rd (expressed model) they may have depicted in their drawings if so we were able to ascertain basic bird external characteristics by means of a rubric scale (Table 2).
Spontaneous drawi ngs and i ndividual interviews were collected from pupils attending a public school at a small village in the country-side named Mallet, Paran|. Pupils are from an urban environment and from a rural area coming from nearby farms. Most of the children are descendants from immi grant Polish and Ukrai nian families whos e forefathers came from Europe and settle down in this part of Paran| State, Brazil by the end of 1890. The pres erve mother tongue, culture and religion. Data was also collected from public kindergartens located in the suburban area at the metropolitan city of Curitiba named Piraquara, from the villages of Palmeira, São João do Triunfo, Fóz do Iguaçu, State of Paran|, Southern Brazil. Analysis of the drawings intended to elicit the mental model they may hav e of bird on the pers pective of Luquet´s, (1927/1979) "intellectual realism" through this drawn expressed model. Furthermore, the analysis would show if there were any difference by age, and unders tanding on the depiction repres ented in the drawing according to a scheme of bird characteristics, such as for instance beak shape and feathers and other features.
A semi-structured interview was conducted with 206 (Femal es=114, Males=92) pupils from mixed abilities, chosen by thei r teacher, to elicit with which bi rds these children were familiar wi th (ques tion 1), where have they seen/found out this bird; many have seen on TV, books (question 2), wi th which bi rds that children notice of their everyday environment around home, near school, in the forest; where they have seen them (question 3). Additionally, which birds from a list (spoken) of 10 common Brazilian bird fauna they have s een (question 4) and from where they gleaned thei r knowledge about birds through further data were obtained; tell more about where they hav e you seen the birds from question 4, maybe from TV, film, stories, books, real life (question 5) whose comments were tape-recorded and transcribed of the semi-s tructured interviews. The interview questions were prepared based in a previous pilot study ( Bartoszeck et al., (2011).
A simple bird drawing rubric scheme for assessing the level of drawings was compiled based on res earchers previous experi ences after examining the drawings based on morphological attributes of birds and each drawing was scored by the raters (Table 2). Furthermore, the analysis of the drawings also took into consideration differences by age, on the level of unders tanding of the external features of a bird. Childr en were asked (during a session at school setting) to draw on a A4 sheet of paper what they think was a bird. They were told that it was not expected an artistic drawing. They were allowed 15 minutes to perform the drawi ng. Children were randomly selected by school teachers and only part of the sample handed their drawing to avoid disturbing the classes.
Ethical issues of parental consent were dealt with according to school protocols and procedures, and the questions being asked of the children were discussed wi th the head master and teachers. Exemplars of drawings and grades allocated are shown in Figures 1 to Figure 7. 3 parts body, 2 legs on thorax, feathers, wings, tail, beak "insect catcher" 4 3 parts body, 2 legs on thorax, feathers, wings, tail, beak "seed breaker" 5 3 parts body, 2 legs on thorax, feathers, wings, tail, beak long (like humming birds) The youngest children attending nursery school are used to draw pictures using crayons or colour pencils (Figure 1).

Interview findings
The first ques tion in the interview asked pupils to name as many birds as they knew. The second question asked where the pupil hav e seen or found out the bird mentioned in the firs t ques tion. It resulted in 11 places coded as P1= at home, P2=backyard, P3=rel ative´s home, P4=on a tree, P5=on a s treet, P6=on TV, P7=flying, P8=in the park, P9=in a book, P10=in a magazine, P11=i n the zoo.The third question asked which birds live around home, near school, in the forest, around, where the pupil have s een them. The fourth ques tion asked if the pupil have seen any of the birds from a prompted list. The fifth ques tion inquired from where pupils have seen the birds from the list, it could be from films, TV, stories, books, real life.

Drawings findings
The analysis of the collected drawings was carri ed out by the first and fourth authors and the lev els achieved are depicted on Table 3. The largest percentages of species observations were for the red ovenbird/João de Barro (16%), woodpecker /pica-pau (12%) and parrot/papagaio (11%) as well as other bird s pecies named by children 4 to 6 years old usually attending the kindergarten in Brazil (Figure 8).

Figure 9. Percentage of the most observed bird species by pupils aged 7 to 11.
A similar pattern was noticed for the percentage of the most obs erved bird species by pupils enrolled in primary school (7 to 11 years old), pigeon/pomba (12%), humming bird/beija flor (11%), parrot/papagaio (9%) as well as other bird species (Figure 9). On the other hand, children aged 12 to 14 years old which are in the end of primary school sel ected as the mos t known species the canary/can|rio, pi geon (pomba) and humming bird all of them with (9%) as well as other bird species with lower percentages (Figure 10). Figure 11. Percentage of the most observed bird species by pupils aged 15 to 16.
The las t group of pupils comprised those attendi ng s econdary school and some the older ones (16 years old) are at the same time s tudying to pass examinations to enter university undergraduate courses. They selected the humming bird/bei ja flor, pigeon (pomb a), parrot (pagaio) and the humming bird (beija flor) all of them with 8% of the observations amongst other species known ( Figure 11).
The thi rd question in the interview asked pupils in a range of ages, which birds they might know and seem which live around home, near school in short birds seem around.
During the i nterview for question 4, pupils aged 4 to 9 s aid that the birds most seen were the parrot (84%), the pigeon (85.3%) and the woodpecker (80%) amongs t other bi rds, but there was no mention for the toucan. The next age group (10 to 13 year-olds) mentioned the canary (85%), the parrot (92.6%), and the woodpecker (85.3%0 but also the toucan (68.2%) The last age group (14-17 y ear-olds) which roughly corresponds to the secon dary school in Brazil, mentioned mostly the canary (96. 4%), trush (99.4%) but also the toucan (78. 5%). These l ast two groups are more independent and can walk around by themselves and thus notice a larger quantity of birds than the younger pupils.
The fifth question in the interview asked pupils in a range of ages to tell more about the source where they had seem the birds in the fourth question. It could be some item from the -R1 to R5 source list below. R -resource alternatives. R1=TV, R2=film, R3=book, R4=stories, R5=real life. Pupils in the age range of 4 to 6 mentioned in the interview that common birds they saw in real life were humming-bird (40%), pigeon (40%), but those l ess common such as seagull and owl were from watching TV. On the other hand, pupils in the age range of 7-11 in a similar fashion to the younger ones, mentioned they had s een the parrot, the woodpecker, humming-bi rd and owl (23%) in real life but the thrus h, macaw and swallow from watching TV. Pupils in the age range of 12 to 14 who are attendi ng classes in the first part of secondary school in Brazil, besides mentioned they saw common birds from real life, such as the humming -bird (48%), canary (46%), woodpecker and the owl (both 42%) poi nted out that the parrot and macaw were the l east represented in school text-books Pupils in the age range of 15-16 who are attendi ng classes in the second part of secondary school said in the interview that the canary (25%), hummi ng-bird (24%) and parrot were seen from real life. They also mentioned the owl, swallow, pigeon and trush were the less represented in school text-books.

Discussion and Conclusions
The present study aimed to explore in a preliminary way, pupils´ perceptions of what is a bird. Data were collected by means of a drawing and interviews from 515 pupils aged 3 to 16 year old from rural and urban schools random selected from Southern Brazil. Similar studies were carried out in Brazil, for i nstance, such as mentions of endemic popular bi rd names by adults (Straube and Vieira da Rocha, 2006). A questionnaire was previously applied to collect data as to find features to identify bird feather colours and beak shape in primary school level in Portugal and England ( Sousa and Freitas, 2000;Evans et al., 2006).
Science as an organized body of knowledge is relatively new in Brazil. It started in the nineteenth century with scholarly studies of mathematics, physics and astronomy amongst other disciplines, and only more recently with Zoology and Biology (Azevedo, 1955). Natural History museums are rare and poorly distributed countrywide and anthropological museums in general exhibit issues related to historical developments as the country was inhabi te d by indians (Ardi gó, 2011). Drawings taken as mental model of how pupils depict the characteristics of a bird were collected in the classroom and analysed by the authors following a rubric (Rapp, 2007).
It is well known that pupils construct their knowledge about bi rds from observing what happens in their environment, from their experience in interacti ng with information when attending school and textbooks. The aim is to integrate pres ent information and previous knowledge in long term memory. Howev er, from this sample younger pupils in the age range 3 to 11 year olds had fewer opportunities for obs erving birds in the open environment and this fact reflected on the way they noticed the bird morphological characteristics (i. e. feathers, tails, kind of beak). Even so, from the interview those aged 4 to 6 , the birds they remember more were the woodpecker, humming -bird and red ov enbi rd and a few others. On the other end, older pupils in primary school aged 7 to 11 remembered of having seen the pigeon, humming bird and the parrot and a few others as represented. Those pupils in the range age of 12 to 14 and 15 to 17 seemed to be more in touch with nature and were able to describe birds with further details as show on Tabl e 3. They remembered having seen the canary, pi geon, hummi ng bird and parrot, as well as pigeon and hummi ng bird respectively ( Figure 11).
During the i nterview pupils were prompted to tell in what places they had s eem the bi rds. Although in the age range of 4 to 6 pupils do not know many birds they show interes t specially on books depicting birds. They also mentioned they saw them at home, on a tree, on street when coming to school in the park and in the zoo when they visit on Sundays and holidays. Those in the primary school (aged 7 to 11) besides indicating at home, on a tree they also pai d more at tention and saw birds in the school backyard and TV programmes. Those pupils in the secondary school aged 15 to 16 are s tart preparing to sit for examinations to enter undergraduate colleague courses. Thus, they mentioned they saw bi rds at home, on the street when visiting relatives at farms or gardens, but less on TV and books.
The third question in the interview was stated as such" tell me which bi rds live around home, near school, in the fores t; where have they seen them?. The objective of the ques tion is to have birds pupils actually might know and really saw in the places stated.
Therefore, pupils aged 4 to 6 mentioned the largest percentage for pi geon, humming bird, lapwi ng and canary. Thos e pupils attending the first part of the primary school aged 7 to 11 mentioned the larges t percentage for lapwing, humming bird, parrot, owl, toucan, macaw. Those pupils attending the second part of the primary school mentioned the largest percentage for canary, owl, pi geon, lapwi ng. And finally those pupils attending secondary school referred to the most birds seen as canary, pigeon, thrush and hen. Probably the last one usually found in farms and popul ar ci ty vegetables fairs.
The last two question in the interview consisted of the name of 10 most common popular bird names (except seagull), where the res earcher asked if the pupil had seen ev ery one of those spoken from the list or not. Next the pupil was asked "tell me more about where had you seen the birds from this spoken list. It could be from TV, books, real life.
Younger pupils usually attend classes in the school premises and have no open field classes where they could obs erve less common birds as seagull and owl. Curiously a similar trend was noticed for pupils in the age range of 7 to 11 who said they saw the canary, thursh, macaw and swallow, from watchi ng TV ins tead from real life as they have more mobility the explore the environment. The las t two groups (secondary school) had more opportunities to go out and saw a larger number of birds in real life. However, they referred that many birds are poorly represented on school textbooks.
Drawings are representations or pieces of information how pupils construct science knowledge in the context of social interaction and local culture. Duri ng the analysis of the drawings collected it was intended to elicit the mental model pupils from this sample might had of a bird on the perspective of Luquet´s (1927/1979) "intellectual realism" through this drawn expressed model. Most of the drawings from the pupils in the age range of 3 to 7 achieved in the analysis, levels 1 to 2 ( i. e. resemblance of a bird, basic body parts, legs, wings, beak) and a few l evel 3. Particularly, children attending nursery school drew pictures classified as nothing recognizabl e according to the rubric cri teria, but explained that is the way they saw birds (T able 3). An example is illustrated on Figure 1. However, pupils in the age range 8 to 12 did a littl e better with some drawings reaching levels 3 and 4 (i. e. besides body parts including wings, tail, they also distinguished beak shapes such insect catcher and seed breaker). On the other way, there was a trend for those pupils aged 13 to 16 whose drawings were classified mostly levels 3 and 4. Specially those aged 14 to 16 achi eved l evel 5 (i. e. body parts plus shape of the beak long). In short, older pupils which probably had more cogni tive experiences were more confident and made further observations with meani ng -birds characteristics-as on Table 3. Some representative drawings are shown from Figure 1. to Figure 7.
The findings suggest that there are similarities as well as differences in children's ideas on the concept of bird according to their age-range and cognitive developm ent. However, this exploratory study has limitations. The number of pupils in the age-range of 3 to 4 is limited. Just a few country areas were s ampled. Further studies should hav e to cover other areas of Brazil and explore the diversity of birds known by children.
Drawings can help children make their scientific ideas visible to teachers, who may provide remedial work to correct faulty knowledge about biological concepts and scientific thinking.

Educational implications
 Improve instructional strategies on Brazilian birds at schools plus field trips;  More emphasis should be in pre-service and in-service teacher training courses;  Start "bird watching clubs" to identify backyard birds in safe surrounding for younger pupils;  Program visits to Natural History Museums where pupils could watch preserved birds accompani ed by family members;  Program visits to the Zoological Garden, where pupils could see birds alive and with indications of kind of species;  Encourage local people, particularly families, to be involved in an aspect of citzi en science of comuni ty bird observations.