Identificación de especies de vertebrados en la formación inicial del profesorado.

Biodiversity crisis is one of the most important challenges we face. In this sense, education must provide solutions that allow citizens to acquire sufficient knowledge and critical capacity to understand reality and to be able to act accordingly. Teachers, at the most basic levels of the education system, are, responsible for bringing different concepts related to biodiversity closer to their students, as well as for fostering values and attitudes of respect towards living beings. In relation to biodiversity, one of the most basic and intuitive levels for its approach in the educational system is the organism level. However, there are researches that show the difficulties that people have in recognizing certain species through the resolution of a questionnaire of 60 species of vertebrates. The objective of this initial research is to analyse the ability of pre-service teachers to recognize and identify those species in their immediate environment. The results show that closer vertebrate species are recognized much more difficult than other species far away but well known because of their presence in the media. In addition, it is also observed that mammals are the best recognized vertebrates. Because of this lack of knowledge about closer species, we should consider the possibility and convenience of offering to future teachers other contents that facilitate knowledge of the closer species and environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]