Journal for Learning through the Arts

Dolphin Tale is a movie about a dolphin that loses its tail after being entangled in a crab trap line and obtains a prosthetic tail. The movie was presented to support environmental education classes at the University of Brasilia. Over a period of five years, 210 Brazilian undergraduate and graduate students answered questionnaires after watching it. The results demonstrate that the movie helped to accomplish environmental education goals: the comprehension of the role of scientific knowledge in solving socio-environmental problems, the impact of human activities on biodiversity, the novelty of the integrative interplay of different disciplines, and the importance of values in awareness.