Abstract
This educational proposal is built up from a varied set of disciplines with different viewpoints which manage different approaches to rivers: hydrology, ecology, land uses, cultural heritage, or fluvial landscape. Nowadays, traditional approaches are misleading, and they promote conflicts between the required knowledge and what society demands. Thus, didactic innovation on an integrated base is required from early educational ages. Here are presented some didactic strategies that could be implemented from elementary schools, with students from 6 to 12 years old. The aim is to establish an approach and procedures for river teaching and help to develop proposals for teachers, which eventually could be used in class. The development of these guidelines is implemented by the identification of fluvial functions along specific items suggested.
TopIntroduction
Rivers are very changing systems. Their dynamic and values do not finish in the waterlogged limits like something rigid and steady. Most rivers have quite special regimes and functioning due to many factors, i.e., irregular climate, seasonal process (flooding and droughts) or regulatory structures like dams, channels, or conduits, which intervene and diverse the river flow. These elements interfere in the state of the river in a particular place and fixed moment. Therefore, people/teachers are no aware because they do not completely know about the complex and the interesting fluvial processes.
This proposal presents an alternative look at rivers to understand and know them and show their values for a Primary Education audience. The authors advocate a quality and scientific education, starting from childhood. To do this, fluvial knowledge must be translated into teaching activity with real classroom approaches and an integrated perspective, which tries to leave nothing out. Each river has its own natural and cultural history and to explain it, this proposal inserts contents from Natural and Social Sciences which are included in this educational stage. But it also includes contents from other subjects like Spanish Literature and Language, Maths, Arts and Physical Education.
This job is born on the bases of Geography and the bioclimatic factors which define a watershed (scale, latitude, longitude, or altitude), as well as the characteristics of each river, such as temperature, rainfall, geomorphology, and ecosystems. It also integrates the people who have lived there and their demands from the river (water, fertile land, protection, etc.), considering that they determine cultural factors which are specifics to the river, i. e., infrastructures, ways of communication or uses of floodplains. Thorough this chapter the main function of the fluvial corridors will be studied: morphological dynamic, water flows, water quality, ecological processes, uses of the river, historical heritage, and landscape approach.
Finally, specific items are presented here as background material for teachers in accordance with Primary Spanish Curriculum.
The main objectives proposed are:
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To increase the knowledge about rivers from early educational levels.
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To show a deeper social perception of rivers to dealing with them.
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To recognize river systems as important natural and cultural heritage.
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To show a wide view of unknown fluvial landscape processes and functions.
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To establish general rules and procedures for river teaching.
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To outline proposals for teachers which could be used in class.
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To provide resources for innovative Geography teaching.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Fluvial Landscape: Perception of the river by both river inhabitants and river users, including all the values and services associated with the river territory.
River Corridor: Territorial structure whose presence, discontinuity and appearance may vary along its course, connecting two or more centres of natural and/or cultural importance linked to river functions.
Fluvial Function: River’s capacity to provide goods and services in an intrinsically and solely way by its essence and existence, regardless of whether these goods or services are used by people, other living beings and/or the surrounding environment.
Fluvial Geology and Geomorphology: Profile and structure of the materials and their arrangement. They provide the solid basis of the river.
Functional River Delineation: Physical and conceptual identification of the river territory along its entire length and beyond the flooded channel.
Fluvial Hydrology: Surface and underground water flows, as well as their quality, quantity and composition and the river's own temporal cycles.
River: Natural origin system whose main attributes are defined by a specific geology and geomorphology, the circulation and conveyance of water through a surface and underground channel (or several) and the longitudinal and transversal connectivity which establishes with other natural and human ecosystems. It is also dynamic in space and time and a source of abiotic, biotic and cultural resources (based on Muñoz, 2010 ).
Educational Innovative Strategies for Rivers: Those didactic strategies that present the river as an integrated and integrating system, beyond the legal definition and always in relation to the students' immediate environment.
Fluvial Heritage: Heritage that, at some point in history, has been generated by the river or by people from river resources and is reflected in today's landscape.
Fluvial Ecology: Support of trophic networks; biomass consumption, export and circulation associated with the river's capacity to transport, recycle and assimilate nutrients and maintain biological diversity.