Indagando la concepción de ambiente en estudiantes al ingreso en la Facultad de Agronomía (Universidad de la República, Uruguay)

Addressing environmental issues important in the formation of agronomists as the management of environmental systems is the core of their business and understand the consequences, allow redirect intervention. In order to identify the concept of environment for students to enter, are asked early in the course of Agrarian Ecology in the Agronomy career. What is meant by environment? Given the underlying epistemological differences in the variousdisciplines and approaches, it was considered either ambient medium and environment. They are asked to develop a definition group, collected was 172, 320 students from 2004 to 2011. The responses are analyzed according to the classification of Loughland et al. (2002) modified by Gonzalez (2003), in three categories: 1) focused on the object: includes global and undifferentiated concepts, analytical mechanics and additive, or that includes the human being as an additional component, 2) intermediate design that incorporates the concept of interactions between biotic and abiotic components still no mention of the social, 3) focused on relationships, conception that sees the environment as asystem, incorporating the interaction between social and natural systems. Preliminary results indicated a greater number of responses in category 1, averaging 46% throughout the period, Category 2 with 40% response rate for Category 3 and finally reached 14%. Comparison between years, there was an increase of responses in category 3, quadrupling since 2009, reaching 30% of them in 2011, to the detriment of Category 1. This would indicate an incorporation of the inherent complexity of considering the interactions of the social and biophysical environment in conceptualizing, raising questions and challenging to investigate all factors that promoted this change.