What does the school contribute to the prevention of socio-natural disasters?

Two experts in the field, Valeria Cabello, from the Catholic University, and Diana Rodríguez, from the National Pedagogical University of Mexico, shared and reflected on school science education experiences that address phenomena such as earthquakes and tsunamis, and how they contribute to the prevention.

Chile is one of the most tectonic countries in the world, having experienced the largest earthquake on record, in 1960 in Valdivia. That is why integrating education on the prevention of these phenomena is crucial in basic education. This is what the experts who participated in the study believe. international seminar "What does the school contribute to the prevention of socio-natural disasters?", organized by the Faculty of Education of the Catholic University.

The exhibitors were Diana Rodríguez, academic at the National Pedagogical University of Mexico, who shared didactic experiences in primary education in the country, and Valeria Cabello, academic and head of the PhD in Education UC, whose presentation was part of the Fondecyt 11181050 project, which has the support of the Research Center for Integrated Disaster Risk Management (CIGIDEN).

Valeria Cabello spoke about work carried out in schools near the San Ramón Fault, in Santiago, where educational psychology sought to understand how children learn science based on knowledge about socio-natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis.: "Explaining in science allows structuring the children's thinking towards a more logical and causal type". For this reason, "what we did was take the development of children's reasoning contextualized in these phenomena, and see what other skills are being developed that are connected to sustainable living and in the community: skills for life," he explained.

In this sense, for the academic, an important point is the recognition of basic education students "as subjects of law, who have a voice and who are marked by issues that affect them." For this, she recommended seeing from the curriculum what phenomena can be addressed and working with the teachers that allow an exercise of restitution of the right to express an opinion of the boys and girls.

One way to integrate the opinions of boys and girls and favor discourse and interactions in the classroom is through modeling, explained Diana Rodríguez, who focused on experiences in primary education in Mexico. "Modelling is identifying a phenomenon, building a model and expressing that model in different ways: writing, model, body models, which allow expressing that abstract construction and loaded with meaning to explain, review and evaluate them". It is about taking school-relevant phenomena, such as earthquakes, so that students can build models that explain them and that allow them to empower themselves and better understand the issues, he said.

In that sense, for the vice dean of the Faculty of Education, Pilar Cox, “learning about socio-natural disasters has to do with their prevention. But, also, it has to do with sustainability and sustainable development, which are relevant issues for the country and for our Faculty, where we work to integrate this axis in the training of future teachers”.

Relive the seminar: