Abstract

Rural Science Education faces unique challenges as rural communities, and their water supply are affected by the ongoing climate crisis. To face this demanding task through science education, we propose to find a meeting point between Local Rural Knowledge about water and national standards to design Teaching and Learning Sequences that meet the needs of rural students and their communities. Rural communities have an inherent, intimate knowledge with their context and how water is used for a variety of purposes. For this study, students were tasked with creating illustrations related to water and the water cycle. A total of 10 students from four different rural schools located in various regions of southern Chile were interviewed to assess their understanding of local rural knowledge about water. Main findings are related to four themes: water sources/types, water problems/issues, local rural knowledge about water, and learning opportunities/challenges. Students identified 25 different water types and/or sources, 10 problems, 13 examples of Local Rural Knowledge and 11 learning opportunities. These findings led us to conclude that students have a diverse and rich set of knowledges related to rural water and that the Teaching and Learning Sequences to be co-designed must draw upon these findings to successfully implement a place-based educational alternative to the national curricula.