The knowledge of invasive plants and its importance in educational uses

The colonization of natural spaces by invasive species is one of the environmental problems faced by many countries. Citizens' awareness is necessary to avoid or reduce this impact on the environment. The school is one of the places where awareness must be raised. However, the nuances of the problem are many and the teacher must have adequate training to be able to start any methodology with which you want to address the problem in the classroom, due to the diversity of situations. An example of this difficulty is posed by an experience carried out with students from the Degree in Primary Education of the University of Zaragoza, when dealing with the introduction of the plant Ipomoea purpurea in the province of Teruel. To this end, seeds of this plant were collected and made available to this teaching staff in training so that they could design an experimental activity aimed at primary school pupils between the ages of 8 and 10, which would allow them to explore the environmental variables necessary for their germination and their impact on the environment. At the end of the experience, the teacher training students valued this activity positively for the training of primary school pupils. However, they stated that they did not have sufficient biological knowledge to tackle this type of activity, nor adequate vocabulary or any other type of social, economic and political skills, which would facilitate them to debate and present their opinions in a rational way in relation to environmental problems