The work is carried out in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goal 13 Climate Action with prospective primary school teachers. The study presented is part of the science education subject at the University of Seville (Spain) during the 2019–2020 academic year. This research has two main goals, on the one hand, to present an innovative educational experience (design and implementation) for teacher training, on the other hand, to assess the educational implication of the experience from the prospective primary school teachers’ self-perception about their level of sustainability competences achieved. The novel educational experience consisted in the inquiry of prior knowledge about climate change in primary school children for the design of a lesson plan. The degree of scope of the educational experience, in particular, the level of sustainability competences achieved was assessed from the self-perception of the participants (Prospective Primary school Teachers) through a Likert-type questionnaire. The results show an improvement in the degree of acquisition of these competences, not only from their self-perception, but also from the investigative process followed through this innovative experience. Likewise, these results indicate the success of the educational proposal as a possible educational strategy for the sustainability of the curriculum in the field of science education.

The research indicates the importance of learning about our natural environment from an early age to train scientifically literate and environmentally responsible citizens. The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions of a group of 120 primary school children regarding the biodiversity of their nearby environment (Andalusia, Spain) based on their drawings. For this, we used a qualitative methodology that focused on the analysis of the content. We analyzed the content of each drawing, complemented with written questions and an interview. The different environmental elements (natural, geological, and anthropic) of the children’s drawings were identified and analyzed. The results show how children perceive the biodiversity (plants and animals) of their nearby environment and their low knowledge of the concept of the environment as a system. Likewise, this study allowed for the definition of a series of emerging categories as an instrument of analysis that will serve as the basis for the design of appropriate strategies to improve initial teacher training in regard to science education.

The aim of this work is to promote outdoor activities to bring students closer to the environment and the biodiversity of their surroundings. In this sense, educational itineraries are a very good educational resource that promotes skills developing (scientific, cartographic, educational, etc.) which are necessary for the appropriate design of teaching proposals. The present study is carried out with the prospective primary teachers from the Universities of Sevilla and Huelva (Spain). Firstly, the purpose is to analyse what type of educational itineraries they can design after an outdoor activity. Secondly, a rubric is validated as an instrument of analysis and evaluation immersed in a qualitative methodology. The results show what kind of itineraries are designed, and what knowledge and conceptual difficulties the students display. Most of them do not recognize the minimal of elements making up the itineraries, and have difficulties in understanding the environment as a complex system. In summary, we think that the students’ lacking of knowledge about the environment and its biodiversity, the poor geographic-cartographic competencies that they have, together with their maintenance of traditional conceptions of teaching, do not allow them to design proposals of interest for teaching-learning processes.

This study was developed with Early Childhood Preservice Teachers within the framework of the Teaching and Learning of Social Sciences over three academic years (2017–2018, 2018–2019, and 2019–2020) at the University of Alcalá. The main objective was to improve the learning to learn competence during teacher training from an outdoor experience at the Museum of Guadalajara (Spain), using e/m-learning tools (Blackboard Learn, Google Forms, QR codes, and websites) and the inquiry-based learning approach. To ascertain the level of acquisition of this competence in those teachers who were being trained, their self-perception—before and after—of the outdoor experience was assessed through a system of categories adapted from the European Commission. The results show a certain improvement in this competence in Early Childhood Preservice Teachers. Additionally, this outdoor experience shows the insufficient educational adaptation of the museum to the early childhood education stage from a social sciences point of view. Finally, we highlight the importance of carrying out outdoor experiences from an inquiry-based education approach. These outdoor experiences should be carried out in places like museums to encourage contextualized and experiential learning of the youngest in formal education.

A qualitative study was made of how the learning-to-learn competence is favoured in prospective primary teachers when they participate in an experimental activity (ExA). The ExA was on the germination of seeds. Its objective was for the prospective teachers to learn how to (i) design and execute a school scientific inquiry, and (ii) reflect metacognitively about their experience with the ExA and what they had learnt. This latter objective is analysed in the present study. To this end, a category-descriptor instrument was designed for the learning-to-learn competence. This allowed the moments and actions to be analysed, as well as the prospective teachers’ cognitive and metacognitive strategies during the ExA. The participants were organised into small work groups, and the information analysed was drawn from the records of the ExA in the notebooks which those groups prepared. In general, the results are indicative of the positive effect of the proposed ExA on the development of cognitive and metacognitive strategies in the prospective teachers’ learning processes. Especially important were the moments of idea confrontation, reflection, and whole-class sharing since they let the prospective teachers become aware of and control these strategies. The scope, limitations, and implications of the study are discussed.

El presente trabajo es una investigación basada en una experiencia educativa realizada con 21 estudiantes de quinto de primaria en un colegio de la provincia de Sevilla (España), surgida a partir de la observación de las lombrices en el huerto escolar. A raíz de esta situación se desarrolla dicha experiencia desde un enfoque metodológico indagativo o IBL de carácter abierto. Se expone, a modo de resultados, las oportunidades didácticas de este recurso para la enseñanza de la ciencia, así como su impacto formativo en el alumnado. Para la recogida y análisis de datos se ha diseñado una parrilla de observación compuesta por cinco categorías (habilidades científicas, actitudes positivas hacia la ciencia, comportamiento y uso respetuoso de materiales e instrumentos, hábitos saludables y sensibilización medioambiental) basadas en las recomendaciones del currículum de educación primaria de Andalucía y la literatura de revisión. En los resultados se contrasta cualitativamente la situación de partida (pre-experiencia) con los aprendizajes alcanzados al final de la experiencia (post-experiencia) donde comprobamos cómo han mejorado en las categorías observadas. Finalmente, este trabajo pone en valor el uso de este recurso desde un enfoque interdisciplinar de la enseñanza para mejorar no solo conocimientos y habilidades científicas, sino también para fomentar hábitos de respeto y sensibilización medioambiental.