Ecology and Education in Marine Protected Areas: Insights from Brazil and South America - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 351

Box 23.1. (continued)

Fig. 23.4 Outside Water “Panels” Diving Trail

Regarding the training of educators, most of them are undergraduate
students at variety of disciplines at the University of São Paulo. These students
serve educators who have a multiplying effect.
These students are very interested in environmental education (EE). Up to
300 students apply each year for the 50 annual vacancies in the teacher training
course. Teachers from the public schools selected for the activities also are
trained in the same way, and later are engaged as fi eld monitors of their own
students, under supervision of more experienced members of the group.
Students receive credits for an elective course, and also receive a formal certifi -
cate documenting their training as EE monitor. A system of certifi cation, with
both horizontal and vertical steps, up to the category of examiner, is being
tested. The training system is based in written protocols, explaining the models,
including their educational contents, techniques, operational and safety proce-
dures. Educators are urged to complement this basic content with their own
experience. Books, chapters, articles, and web-pages have been developed in
order to support and complement this training (e.g. Ghilardi-Lopes et al. 2012 ).
Up to now 733 educators have been trained, including 75 teachers from
public schools. Part of this group, including one person from the fi rst year
(2002) and four from the second, are still participating as senior “non-profi t”
members. Since this work is completely volunteered, the high involvement
indicates that they are motivated by ethical rather than purely economic val-
ues. At least 15 of these educators has been contracted as staff for Brazilian
Protected Areas (BPA), a fact that shows the need that BPA have for people
trained with this theory and practice integration in EE, having also multiplier
capacity. Since the beginning, the EE actions have been annually evaluated by
scientifi c research (Berchez et al. 2005 ), with results expressed in 22 papers
or chapters. Studies have focused on the achievement of the educational
objectives, the ecological impact of the activity, and more recently on the
evaluation of visitors' perceptions about global environmental change.