As linguagens no ensino de Geografia: caminhos metodológicos

Abstract

The main goal of this work is to investigate the opportunities offered by films and videos in the development of geographical reasoning and their incorporation into structures of practices in the teaching of Geography at school. The proposals presented here derived from the author’s experience in using different media to stimulate student engagement when he worked as a Geography teacher at primary level. The challenges derived from such practices led to questions on how students assimilate geographical contents and the intellectual processes involved in them. Since orality is an important medium to understand concepts developed by students, including those related to geographical knowledge, the diversification of forms of expression (or languages) in the classroom can stimulate students’ engagement and improve learning. It was important in this work to develop cognitive abilities related to the formation of reasoning with the goal of bringing together the geographical knowledge of the practices of interpretation of the space. With this in mind, it is important to investigate how different forms of languages act in the construction of students’ discourse and in the construction of geographical reasoning that support not only the acquisition of knowledge but also personal development. The didactic priority was to relate concepts of landscape and place with the interpretation of spaces lived and recognized by sixth year students of elementary education in a public school in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Based on these parameters, a research-action was undertaken in the planning of a didactic sequence. Class activities used photography, maps, videos and films. The first three used images to facilitate engagement and interpret space, contributing to the reading of the landscapes represented in the images. The fourth activity involved the production of films, which incorporated other languages, such as text in writing the script, images, framing techniques and orality (communication) in all phases of the production. The filming had to be adapted during its implementation to make the analysis inviable. By doing that it was possible to give back to the students this research-action It was noticed that orality was of great importance in the learning process, especially with the local scale approach. The activities facilitated the contextualization of realities that are part of the space the students live in, which indicates the potential of images in the development of geographical knowledge and engagement in activities.