Repositório RCAAP

The aim of this article is to analyze the notions of students about the Nature of Science (NOS) and Scientific Inquiry (SI). We refer to the Nature of Science (NOS) as the characteristics of scientific knowledge and Scientific Inquiry (SI) as the characteristics of the processes through which scientific knowledge is developed. From a research discipline developed with eighth grade students of elementary school II, we used two questionnaires (initial and final) and interviews to collect and later analyze the data. As a result, the 29 students presented in general, little notions regarding the Nature of Science and Scientific Inquiry. Even so, answers such as the difference between laws and scientific theories, the use of creativity by scientists, and the beginning of a scientific inquiry with a question were highlighted in their answers.

The study of scientific controversies is a complex theme because of its contextual peculiarities. Philosophers, sociologists, historians of science, and researchers in science have shown that their analysis can present diverse perspectives that encompass the appreciation of their genesis and progress as well as considerations about its and. In this sense, the present article discusses Kuhn’s conceptions of values in the theorical choice that can contribute to the understanding of the termination process warm debates in science. Moreover, in the case of a theoretical article approaches to McMullin's classification involving resolution, closure and abandonment of controversies in Science. Indeed, it introduces implications for the teaching of sciences aimed, above all, to break with the limited view that disputes are resolved through experiments.

This paper aims at discussing the contributions of a historical case about Marie Curie for supporting pre-service teachers’ reflections about Nature of Science (NOS). The historical case was drawn in the light of Allchin’s (2013) ideas about contextualised and functional nature of science teaching. The activities based on the case were developed in a class of Chemistry pre-service teachers from a Brazilian public university. All the lessons related to the application of the activities were audio- and video-recorded. From the ideas expressed by the pre-service teachers throughout the process, we discuss the relevance of this teaching approach to guide discussions about NOS aiming at promoting a functional understanding about science.

This article is based in a master´s research and to discuss relevant aspects of a continuing education course for teachers who teach mathematics, based on the CTS approach (Science, technology and society) and Critical Mathematics Education approaches. The research qualitative, occurred in two moments. First, we performed an analysis of mathematics issues contained in the ENEM (National High School Exam) (2012-2016), to investigate if such questions had in their context, questions related to the CTS approach. In a second moment, considering the tripod: Teaching, Research and Extension, we developed a continuing education course, based on the CTS and EMC approaches, to identify how teachers understand the CTS and EMC approaches and how they incorporate the theme in their practice, and build with teachers, contextualized strategies for teaching mathematics. The analyzed questions were used as a teaching-learning tool to discuss possibilities to include the CTS and EMC approaches in mathematics teaching. We observed that teachers did not know the CTS and EMC approaches; either did they consider the subject matter in their practice. In this way, we emphasize the importance of continuing education courses, as it presents the teacher with new didactic-pedagogical strategies, as well as, it allows important discussions about their practice.

Assuming the importance of reflecting on the delineation of mathematical tasks, especially for classes of Differential and Integral Calculus, this article aims to analyze the process of designing one of the tasks that make up the educational product coming from a dissertation of professional masters in Mathematics Teaching: how it was elaborated, presented / worked with the students and, when necessary redesigned and reapplied. In order to do this, the assumptions of the Design Research are adopted and a qualitative and essentially descriptive data analysis is presented, including application cycles that occurred over four semesters in four different contexts. In our analysis, we tried to highlight, through the selected task item: (i) elements resulting from the methodological course of work design; (ii) phases of its design; (iii) retrospective analysis and considerations of the teacher-researcher, the first author of the text.

No summary/description provided

No summary/description provided

The centrality of the concept of equation in Mathematics and in other areas, both in Basic Education and in Higher Education was one of the main reasons to develop this research whose objective was to identify and to understand the conceptions of equation from prospective mathematics teachers. Grounded on Theory of Conceptual Profiles and researches about Conceptual Profile of Equation, the investigation was constituted on a qualitative research, in an interpretative perspective, whose data were analyzed according to the Content Analysis method. It becomes evident, in its findings, that the conceptions of equation of future mathematics teachers investigated are related to some zones of a Conceptual Profile of Equation under construction, especially with those that refer to the pragmatic and procedural character of the equations. The data analysis also allowed the elaboration of a new zone of the Conceptual Profile of Equation, denominated Formal Zone, besides the reorganization of the other zones of the profile.

This text studies the theme of mathematics in the teacher training of the first school years. The subject is treated considering that, in the set of professional knowledge of the teacher of the first school years, has been elaborated a mathematical for teach articulated to a mathematics to teach. The mathematics for teach reveals itself as a professional knowledge, a mathematics for the exercise of teaching, a teacher's work tool for teaching mathematics. And, if this is so, by theoretical hypothesis, the mobilizing question of the article can be enunciated as: in the use of teaching programs and textbooks as sources of research, how to characterize mathematics for teach? The socio-historical studies that have been developed by ERHISE of the University of Geneva are considered as theoretical-methodological contributions. As results, significant points are scored for the development of research that aims to characterize the professional knowledge of the teacher who teaches mathematics.

Faced with the relevance of science in postmodernity and its contribution to humanity, students' conception of science and scientific doing became the object of academic study. This research analyzed the conceptions about science and the scientific job in students of a Public Normal Course of the South of Brazil, future teachers of the Initial Years of Elementary Education. A qualitative-comprehensive, interpretive methodology was used, based on participants' answers to an open question and graphic representation about science and scientists, using Hermeneutic Phenomenological Analysis (HPA). We was concluded that, for these participants, science is, basically, an experimental assignment and uses the standard scientific method, being practiced by men with poor social life, moved by a high idealism. At the end of this article, the implications of these conceptions on the future pedagogical practices of these participants are commented.

This work analyzes the academic production expressed in dissertations and thesis on experimentation in Chemistry teaching, defended in Postgraduate Programs related to the areas of Teaching, Education and Chemistry of the CAPES from 2004 to 2013. Dissertations (122) and theses (21) were investigated based on the following descriptors: year of defense; level of academic qualification; geographical region; institution; educational level and thematic focus. The results showed a significant growth in the number of studies on the subject in question. The most researched levels of education were high school (68.5%) and higher education (27.3%), whereas the most important thematic focus was experimentation as a didactic strategy (58.3%) and experimentation in teaching materials (20.2%). Experimentation related to preservice and inservice teacher education was still incipient, 7.1% and 13.1% of production, respectively, enabling us to infer that this is an important gap to be filled by future studies.

This article presents the relation of scientific dissemination (SD) with genetics and textbooks. It was questioned what changes occur in the SD texts when they are inserted in the Biology textbooks and what implications these changes can cause in students' understanding about science. The objective of this research is to analyze the possible modifications carried out in the textbooks in relation to their original sources. One collection of high school biology textbooks was selected and seven texts were analyzed according to the categories of discursive re-elaboration, nature of science, language and degree of hybridity of the texts of the textbooks. The results indicated that the exclusion was the most frequent element during discursive re-elaboration, although the texts contribute to a vision of the nature of science and present linguistic resources that facilitate the reader's understanding of important resources to be used in teaching.

This article aims to describe the construction and validation of a questionnaire designed to investigate students' conceptions about human genetic engineering and eugenics. The instrument was built upon the type of Likert scale, in which the respondent manifests his degree of agreement with a set of assertions. In order to validate it as a research instrument, the questionnaire passed through semantic validation, carried out by six experts and a pilot study, resulting in changes, insertions and exclusions of some items. After these changes, the questionnaire was applied to a sample of 283 Brazilian students and another one of 335 Portuguese students for further statistical validation. The reliability of the instrument was evaluated by the Cronbach Alpha test, which reached an internal consistency of 0.856 for the Brazilian sample and 0.830 for the Portuguese one. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett's Sphericity tests confirmed the feasibility of factorial analysis. Thus, the questionnaire developed and applied in Brazilian and Portuguese university courses was duly validated and is in conditions to be used for the evaluation of students’ scientific literacy on genetic engineering, being an important contribution to future research.

This article aims to identify characteristics related to the Nature of Science in popular Science texts of Ciência Hoje online journal, in order to verify if these materials can be a potential resource to discussion of this theme in science education. Articles from the area of chemistry, physics and biological sciences were selected from January 2014 to April 2016, totalizing nine texts, which were analyzed through Discursive Textual Analysis. For the analysis of the corpus, the studies on epistemology of science were adopted as theoretical reference. It was possible to identify five dimensions (categories) about the Nature of Science in these texts: theoretical-methodological; motivational; resulting; historical-temporal; and social and collective. Although they present some stereotypes about science, the results indicate that such texts can be used as didactic resources in the approach of this theme.

This research seeks an alternative to improve the motivation of students to learn science according to two motivational models, little explored in the scope of teaching, especially in Brazil. The first model considers three levels of motivation: extrinsic, intrinsic and transcendent. The second model is the person in four dimensions. Both models presented positive results in the business context, were tested in some educational institutions and have, in common, two central features: the search for meaning and altruism. The data of this research were collected, mainly, through two questionnaires, applied to a group of 102 students from three Engineering areas of a public college. The analyzes of the results give indications that the search for meaning and altruism, central features of the two motivational models, were considered relevant by the students, who studied the discipline of Physics.

The article present a survey of research involving geometry contents from the Historical-Cultural perspective, seeking to understand how they organize of geometric knowledge and to identify if they present a discussion about the logical-historical movement of the concept approached. When doing the readings we organized an investigation characterizing the researches regarding the focus of approach. We carried out a qualitative bibliographical survey that investigated 16 dissertations and 6 theses between the years of 2006 and 2017. We found that most approach geometric concepts with students of basic education, those involving document analysis and conceptual discussion present proposals for the teaching of geometry. Research on formation of teacher indicates that actions involving activity theory and the logical-historical movement of geometric concepts contribute to the appropriation of concepts and to teaching activities. We defend the need for other researches so that we can propose actions involving the teaching of geometry with an approach based on the Historical-Cultural perspective and the logical-historical movement.

This theoretical article aims to present a proposal methodological model, constructed from a research that analyzed the relationships between the creative processes of different professionals and modeling procedures (mathematics). The proposalThe model, called learning with modeling, is based on the theoretical ideas of Rodney Bassanezi and Maria Salett Biembengut. The results of the research that originated this paper was carried out with 10 professionals from different branches, their results encouraged the publication of this proposal theoretical results. Pathways to use as a pedagogical practice are modeling, through learning with modeling, in the search to develop creativity and communication, in order to value the student's culture and surroundings. As results the categories are presented: Intention - choice of the theme to be developed; Projection - familiarization with the subject, search for subsidies; Creation - preparation of first sketches and 'product' (model); Product - validation and evaluation of the model. Considerations and recommendations about education suggest ways of using learning with modeling as a pedagogical alternative for any year of schooling and discipline.

The National Professional Master in Physics Teaching (NPMPT) emerged as a Network Professional Master, focused much more on Physics content than on pedagogical and/or epistemological background. In the light of Bakhtin's thought, we envisage more than 200 works completed up until the middle of 2017 as a set of statements whose verbal and non-verbal aspects express different voices, responding and directing themselves to other utterances. The analysis was done by means of a mixed method integrating the Bakhtin’s analytical device, proposed by Veneu et al. (2015), to correspondence analysis (GREENACRE, 2017). When analyzing 208 works presented in the context of the NPMPT, we found that the articulation of the theoretical framework in the developed product is dependent on the formation and the research history of the advisors, and that work oriented by supervisors with formation or research history in the area deviates from the program general guidelines.

The research aims at building an educative playful material in alphabetic form and parody format, the medicinal plants´ ABC, in addition to that was created a playbook in order to promote science teaching, to complement the literacy process in students of 1st grade in a state elementary school, Japeri, Rio de Janeiro. Furthermore, it´s a qualitative case study, the tools used to collect the data were: participants’ observation and individual interview. The materials were built from students’ previous background knowledge and their preferences, taking into account the popular lore, therefore the material would be more appealing to its users. Lastly, we also created a material in which we believe might be thought provoking to teaching, mainly for those who teach basic levels, considering the possibilities of teaching scientific knowledge and literacy.

The controversial themes has been a way to highlight the link between science and social context to achieve scientific literacy. The aim of this research is to identify and characterize the perceptions of a group of university students about the controversial topic: relations between science and oppression. The method used was arts-based educational research, adopting the Theater of the Oppressed as artistic language. From collaborator’s perception, science can be used to oppress and the oppression through science is characterized by similarities with oppressions imposed by the work, the media and the education system. The results suggest discussions of science and oppression result knowledge growth about science and may result in positive attitudes towards science. And shows the profitability of arts-based educational research in science education.