RCAAP Repository

We discuss some implications of the law project “School without party”(Law project nº  867/2015 and Senate law project  n° 193/2016) for science education, with focus on the science and religion issue, the “origins of the universe” and “origins of life”. For this purpose, we present discussions regarding the “Nature of Science” and some communicative ideals which emmerged from the “Theory of Communicative Action”.

The present paper brings some approximations of Philosophical Hermeneutics to Chemistry Education. We bring elements which take us to search for contributions of Philosophical Hermeneutics to Chemistry Education in Comunidades Aprendentes em Educação Ambiental Ciências e Matemática (CEAMECIM) research group, followed by some theoretic contributions of this approximation. We finalized bringing some scholars concerned with a hermeneutic approach related to Chemistry in two Philosophy of Chemistry journals: Foundations of Chemistry and Hyle – International Journal for the Philosophy of Chemistry. This meeting between Hermeneutics and Chemistry Education may contribute to understand what Chemistry Education is shown in our teaching practice from a philosophical perspective open to hermeneutics possibilities of dialogue, of linguistic historical tradition beyond its instrumental character and of aesthetics in Chemistry Education.

This work aims to map pioneering initiatives related to the insertion of proposals to thematic approach in Physics, Chemistry and Biology Teaching, in high school. A literature review was carried out in event proceedings and Brazilian journals, considering the period from 2006 to 2011, defined from historical milestones related to the edition of National Curricular Parameters. For analysis, the localized studies were grouped according to the type of insertion that was denominated as expanded or punctual. Then, the proposals were depicted under two parameters: nature of the theme and purpose of scientific concepts. Among the results, it is predominant the punctual implementation, grounded on conceptual and contextual themes, in which the topic studied is generally determined by the scientific conceptualization. However, the analysis of these publications indicates that a broader understanding of school content seems to be emerging, which is not limited to the conceptual framework of the school disciplines.

This present article aims to highlight the potentialities found for teachers in a state public school from Santa Maria in Rio Grande do Sul, where they used three pedagogical moments dynamics to the curricular organization and also as didactic – pedagogical tool in the classroom. The tools used in the collect of information were: questionnaires, teachers´ pedagogical practice books, the researcher´s books, semi-structural interviews and documentary analysis of the classes planning. The methodology used to the data analysis was the discursive textual analysis. In the potentialities, grouped characteristics like: the participation, the problematization and the dialogue built between teacher-students, and the relevance of the formative process accomplished.

In the context of a formative process of educators of sciences  in  the municipality of Santa Luzia/BA, the contributions of the Thematic Network in the construction of a Thematic Cycle were investigated and their role was analyzed in the development of the culture of participation.  In order to do so, the information obtained during the Thematic Research process carried out in the mentioned municipality was rediscussed, in which the following categories emerged: a) the cause-consequence relationship of the culture of silence and b) The culture of participation as political-epistemological alternative. Among the results, the cyclic-dialectic relationship between the cause and the consequence of the limit situations is highlighted, which are articulated to the political and epistemological needs of social organization. These aspects were problematized and systematized in a Teaching Plan through the Thematic Cycle, corroborating for the effectiveness of the culture of participation in STS education.

This paper presents research referring to History of Science in Brazilian school books. Particularly, our goal was to contribute to the understanding of the way elements related to the process of historical construction of the concept of atmospheric pressure appear in school books. This work discusses specifically the results from the analyses accomplished according to the following criteria: historiographical concerns, Brazilian educational documents, primary and secondary sources in History of Science related to the development of the concept of atmospheric pressure.  Some problems were noticed such as anachronism, pseudohistory, näive views regarding Nature of Science, the absence of explanations supported by past thinker and a (totally) decontextualized approach to Torricelli’s experiment.

To understand a mathematical concept it is needed to knowing to articulate the multiple representations of these concept. Articulate the representations of the concept of function it is not just about knowing how to identify if a table, diagram or graphics represents a function, imply to building a semantic knowledge of the concept. We believe that the articulation between various representations could be managed by the definition of function that learners would adopt. Not any definition, but one that be used and reach all representations, what we call operationalization of the definition of function. In this paper, our aim is to reflect about how to favoring the operationalization of the definition of function by learners. For this, we made a bibliographical survey focusing on the analysis of the historical-epistemological development of the concept of function, and a discussion on the multiple representations of this concept. We conclude by presenting three categories that we believe would favor the operationalization of the definition of function and that could be object of study in future projects.

The objective of this work was to validate the attitudes scale towards teaching statistics (EAPANE) and to evaluate the attitudes of teachers from the elementary school in eight schools in the city of Uberlândia (MG) - two public schools; two municipal schools; a federal school; and three private schools. The scale has satisfactory psychometric properties to measure the construct "Positivity of the Attitude of Teachers in the elementary school towards Teaching Statistics". It is observed in the four domains generated by the Exploratory Factor Analysis that they are essentially cognitive in nature, which seems to indicate that the teachers consider the statistical elements important for the formation of their students, but unfortunately do not highlight affective aspects, that is, indicates that for the teachers participating in the research, the teaching of statistics is an important tool for the treatment of data that is present in the daily life of the citizen.

This article aims to develop an epistemological reflection about the process for selection of the Chemistry textbooks distributed for the National Program of the Didactic Textbooks. The goal of this study was to demonstrate the existence of a pattern for the choice of this material. The research, of exploratory nature, checked the data supplied by Ministry of Education and confronted the percent of participating schools with the most chosen textbooks, the description of each book with the view for books provided for the process of 2008 to 2015, aiming at revealing the existence of a tendency for maintenance of the style of thinking, to which teachers are bound and has already been strengthened for many couplings, strengthened through the professional formation. This shows that the choice does not always serve reality’s needs of students, but to the concepts of   teaching present in the practice for each teacher.

Evolutionary theory is defended as an organizing axis for biology teaching, but there are difficulties to do so, including conflicts with some religious orientations that perform literal readings of the Bible, such as Pentecostalism. In this research, we sought to understand how the teaching of evolution is developed in contexts of great presence of Pentecostal students. For this purpose, we have investigated two schools with large numbers of Pentecostal students by means of observation, interviews and questionnaires. The results show that when teachers discuss evolution, they dismiss or show fear of students’ religious ideas or introduce their own personal beliefs. We propose a model of dialogue, based on the Habermas’s idea of discourse and France’s idea of search space, where common ground can be found to promote the understanding of evolution without the intention of converting different views. We show the possibilities for the model applied to our data and point to future developments.

This theoretical paper presents analytical frameworks for the study and development of Mathematical Modelling Educational Curriculum Materials (MMECM). The analytical frameworks were constructed from a master’s research and are oriented under the lens of Basil Bernstein’s Code Theory. The analysis indicates that MMECM can suggest variations of control in the pedagogical relation, being the control centered in the teacher and, at other times, shared with students. In addition, MMECM may indicate ways of organizing possibilities for blurring the degree of isolation in the relationships between discourses as well as in the relationships between spaces.

The present study aims to enlarge the understanding about the meaning on the quadratic function concept, according to students from a 1st stage high school class, considering ideas and concepts from the historical-cultural approach. Empirical data were produced from math classes taught by an academic math course to take the course Supervised: Mathematics in High School. Empirical data are: record of the classes developed in an analytical-reflexive report that is constituted as field diary; developed plans cut-outs. Elements such as scientific and spontaneous concepts, conceptual relations and proximal development zone (PDZ) structure the text into units and subunits of analysis. Caraça (1998) and Vygotsky (1991), among others, extend the understandings of the proposed analysis. Among the final considerations presented there is the idea that the concepts can be raised to a signification level greater by students, through the establishment of conceptual relations, and that the teacher interferes in the interpsychological plan of the concepts formation.

This study presents an activity of chemistry teaching based on the analysis of conceptual evolution and appropriation of macroscopic, microscopic and symbolic levels by students during activities mediated writing and rewriting. It attended by 30 students from the Environmental Chemistry course and 22 Bioprocess Engineering and Biotechnology of the University of Tocantins - Campus Gurupi. The activities were held in the elective course Introduction to Forensic Chemistry, covering Fingerprint theme and being conducted in three phases: completion of the game and writing activity; socialization of written, rewritten and discussion of the concepts of activity; and correcting rewritten with teacher guidance for targeted rewriting. The results show a conceptual evolution of the theme, especially after the oriented rewriting, indicating the students' appropriation of the three levels (macro, micro and symbolic) and the importance of moving between them to understand the chemical concepts.

The article analyzes a segment of the academic production expressed in dissertations and theses in Teaching of Biology, defended in the period 1972-2011, in Brazilian graduate programs. We have identified 1000 documents related to this subarea of Science Education research. In the sequence, only those that used the term Action-Research as a designation for the research modality were selected in their titles, abstracts and / or keywords. We detected 24 documents that were analyzed through the technique of content analysis. As part of the analysis, the information regarding the methodological design of these works was compared with a set of criteria used to define action-research, according to the literature dedicated specifically to this research modality. The results point to the low number of researches of this nature in the academic production investigated, confirming observations found in the specialized literature, showing the general confusion that involves the use of the slogan "action research".

Editorial

No summary/description provided

This study aims understanding how ninth-graders in a public school within the Taquari Valley, RS, Brazil, use their smartphones in non-school activities. The theoretical framework is in consonance with the field of Ethnomathematics and its intertwining with authors who support the use of digital technologies in school environments. The research methodology is qualitative in nature, with ethnographic approaches, with the use of descriptive analysis to interpret the outcomes. The following outcomes have been highlighted: i) owning a cell phone no longer represents a social/economic barrier; ii) the features most commonly used by the students are the camera and the social network applications; iii) smartphones have changed the way people relate to and communicate with each other.

The insertion of history and philosophy of science in biology classes of High School is a relevant factor in the teaching and learning process in this school subject. This paper aims to present and discuss the results of a research about how history of science is specified in textbooks. The sample involved 19 books, dated from 1955 to 2006. To analyze the data was used the following elements of the didactic transposition: depersonalization of knowledge, moral/biological ageing and the old/new dialectic. The results demonstrate that the most part of the samples did not reveal the historical aspects about the development of the genotype and phenotype concepts, in which only one of the books analyzed were discussed the historicity of the construction process of this concepts.

This paper presents a theorical and a descriptive proposal for a Didactical Engineering – DE, in the context of teaching of a certain specific subject in Complex Analysis. Thus, emphasizing the two initial systematic phases, namely known as preliminary and a priori analysis, it tends to accentuate a design a conception, estructuration and description of two didactical situations for the teaching, affected by the assumptions of the Theory of Didactical Situatibons – TSD. Thus, to take as essential character of the ability of visualization, consolidating an apprentice action in searching of some properties related to the process of integration in the complex variable, the works also indicates certain aspects that should be explored with the GeoGebra software with the scope of enphasize some properties and significations of the symbol that go beyond the mathematical and logical sense.

This study investigated the effects of the process of digital storytelling construction by science teachers on the use of tablet computer in teaching practice. The methodological path approaches research-training (NÓVOA, 2004) and involved the accomplishment of formative meetings with the subjects of research to socialize situations lived by them in the classroom and to guide them in the preparation of the digital storytelling. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted aiming at the triangulation of the data for qualitative analysis. Three themes emerged from the data: A) Influences of the personal and professional relationship with technology in the process of technological appropriation; B) The motivating role of digital storytelling in the actions of teachers in relation to the use of technologies; C) Implications of the production of digital storytelling on the role of teachers in the use of technologies. The results of the investigation indicate that: a) the experience of making storytelling using digital resources promoted movements of approximation and curiosity in relation to these resources; B) the proposal to narrate the experiences with the tablet computer in the classroom encouraged the teachers to make pedagogical use of this technological resource; C) the production of the digital storytelling led the subjects to reflect on the role of the teacher in relation to the pedagogical use of the technologies, and this fact contributed to the process of continuous training of the investigated subjects. Thus, the production of digital storytelling by teachers in a training situation has proved to be an instrument for reflection on the teaching practice mediated by the technologies while at the same time fostering the pedagogical use of Digital Information and Communication Technologies.