A qualidade do ar: propostas de trabalho de investigação e alfabetização científica

Abstract

The problem of this study was centered on air quality. The theme was chosen in the light of some concerns and questions on the teaching of chemistry to Middle level students: Is the theme air quality and its properties explored in textbooks used for high school? At what level of depth and in what contexts? Is the relationship between scientific content, new technologies and the challenges to air quality measurement of interest to high-school students? In states public state schools network is there room for the development of projects with the objective of enhancing student participation in the practices of the scientific community? The majority of Brazilian schools, have a rigid system in which faithful adherence to all programmed content is paramount, a traditional and embedded teaching, in which the method of transmission and memorization is still the most frequently used for science teaching. We believe that this practice can divert students from scientific culture rather than include them, because with such method students are not given the proper stimulation to participate in an investigative way and to develop critical sense and autonomy. Therefore, there is evidence of the need for a renewal. Students ought to be able to understand the processes and the construction of scientific knowledge in accordance with the technological applications and their respective implications in society. In this sense, we elaborate, develop and analyze a sequence of teaching on the subject air with activities inserted in an investigative approach and that contemplates the relationships between science, technology, society and the environment (CTSA) intended at the promotion of Scientific Literacy (AC), once that such proposition has been shown as an alternative path to a Science Teaching. This teaching sequence, an educational product elaborated in this dissertation, was developed with students of a public state network school in Belo Horizonte / MG. The results indicate that the teaching sequence used contributed to the progressive advancement of students in other skills during the processes involved in air quality analysis, in addition to the conceptual content. Research was facilitated with relationships between CTSA, thus eliciting the beginning of scientific literacy. In this sense, indicators of the CA were pointed out, with movements that encouraged serialization, organization and classification of information, logical and proportional reasoning, hypothesis collection and testing, prediction, justification, explanation and articulation of ideas, research, argumentation, reading and writing, problematization, creation and acting.