Conhecimento dos alunos do ensino fundamental acerca das plantas medicinais: uma revisão integrative.

Abstract

Medicinal plants are part of human history and are used for a wide range of treatments. However, it is clear that this practice, which is passed down from one generation to the next, ends up being little used by young people, especially children and adolescents in elementary school. Given this problem, the study aimed to carry out an integrative review focusing on the knowledge of elementary school students about medicinal plants. The methodology is an integrative review, carried out in the databases of the Capes Periódicos Portal and the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (BDTD), during the month of September 2024. Data collection used the descriptors: Education. Elementary School. Medicinal Plants. Cross-referencing occurred using the Boolean descriptor and. The guiding question was: What is the knowledge of elementary school students about medicinal plants? The inclusion criteria for the integrative review were: scientific articles, monographs, dissertations and theses that addressed the theme of the study, were written in Portuguese, had free access and were published in the last 5 years, that is, from 2019 to 2024. The results were found in two different databases: in BDTD, 44 dissertations and theses were found; after going through the criteria established in the integrative review, 13 studies remained and, of these, 5 dissertations were selected; in the Capes Portal, 49 studies were identified; after applying the inclusion criteria, this total fell to 27 and of this total, only 5 scientific articles were part of the research. Of the 10 articles selected for the integrative review, 5 were dissertations and 5 were scientific articles, published between 2019 and 2023. It was concluded that there is good material that presents the topic and that despite there being some difficulties in relation to teaching medicinal plants to elementary school students and even their interest, it is noted that teachers, especially those in the Science discipline, seek to introduce this topic in the most diverse ways, such as building vegetable gardens and raising awareness about the importance of practices aimed at environmental preservation.