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Italian version
 ECO-ETOLOGY SCHOOL 

The School of Eco-Ethology and Field Research:

The school of eco-ethology is born in 1994 within the course in Ethology given by Dr. Andrea Camperio Ciani at the Psychology department of the University of Padua. Today it has reached its 15th edition and during these years it has enabled the formation of more than 300 students in the techniques of field research.

THIS SCHOOL IS BORN WITH TWO DIFFERENT AIMS:

  1. To provide students with a practical formation in the field in the methodologies, both psychological and ethological, which are the most common and at the forefront of field research for the analysis of an ecosystem.
  2. To employ the abilities of students just formed in the various techniques mentioned above for the collection of data in the context of a research project started by the professor and his collaborators.

During its various editions the School of Eco-Ethology has gathered consensus and enthusiasm from almost all of the participants which have been brought to observe the reality around them, in different contexts (Morocco, Thailand, forests in Casentino, Po delta, small Italian islands, Sri Lanka, Zanzibar and Indonesia) with a critical method, giving them the instruments to study it without being too invasive. It has also provided data, ideas, material for a number of scientific publications on prestigious journals, not to mention the cues and ideas for projects of safeguard and cooperation for development in the various countries visited. The choice of the place in which to conduct the school is never by chance, the sites are chosen according to real problematics present there, which staff and students can study, thus becoming immersed in a real research situation, not created ad hoc for the school. The school has been conducted in countries like Morocco, where some studies on desertification have taken place; Thailand, where the causes and the possible solutions to the problem of the ostracizing of a small island population have been studied; Italy, in various regions, where the conflicts between the local population and a National Faunistic Park and the institutions controlling it have been studied.

The formative objective of the school is to form the participants, both on the theoretical and the practical level, to the methodology and experimentation of field research.

Instruments and methods employed in field research are presented to the participants to:

  1. Evaluate and monitor the environment
  2. Verify the impact of man on the environment and
  3.  Highlight who are the stake holders, actors which act/interact in a specific reality such as that of the environment considered, and which are the priorities, the needs and the requests of each of them.
There are two different formative modules, one theoretical and one practical. The first consists of lectures given by the staff with experience in the subject covered (during the course of the years both professors from foreign and Italian Universities and institutional figures from the various realities explored, not to mention Dr. Camperio Ciani’s collaborators, have given lectures). The second is made up by practical exercises which have the goal of making the student concretely test the methodology learned, so as not to relegate the information to the theoretical sphere and solve the thousands of problems which field work, as opposed to the over-control of the lab, entails. All of this is normally accompanied by a number of Brain Storming meetings, usually in the evening to conclude a day of data collection, during which the activities and the problems encountered are discussed. All of this allows the development of a formative offer as much as possible engaging and shared.

THE THEORETICAL MODULE (an example)

 
  • The protection of the environment and the importance of monitoring in the evaluation of an ecosystem (2 hrs)
  • The biological indicator and its role in environmental monitoring (2 hrs)
  • Monitoring techniques, transects, recognizing the animals (2 hrs)
  • Techniques employed in field research: interviews, questionnaires, censuses, focus groups (4 hrs)
  • Describing the environment around us through the data collected (2 hrs)
  • GEA: presentation of the association and its projects (2 hrs)

THE PRACTICAL MODULE (an example)

  • Transect, recognizing the animals and verification of the impact of man (8 hrs)
  • Individuation of the “actors” which gravitate within the reality analyzed (4 hrs)
  • Creation of the interview to administer to the “actors” (stakeholders) (4 hrs)
  • Administration of the interview (8 hrs)
  • Open discussion on the techniques presented (2 hrs)
  • Open discussion on the possible interventions within the reality analyzed (2 hrs)
  • Evaluation questionnaire of the School of Eco-Ethology (30 minutes)

A.p.s. GEA Onlus Associazione Internazionale per lo Studio e la Conservazione degli Ecosistemi

Sede Legale:
Via XX Aprile 1944 n°27, 35127 Padova

Sede Operativa:
Laboratorio di Psicologia applicata all'Ecologia ed alla Cooperazione c/o Liripac,
Via Belzoni 80 35100 Padova
Tel: 0498278497 email: info@geanatura.it