O impacto da linguagem dos quadrinhos no ensino de Ciências

Abstract

Proposing classroom activities that engage students in science and science readings has been a constant challenge for teachers in this field. However, these same students seem to like comics and they dedicate their time to reading them. It is evidenced by the large number of published comics, which appear as a medium in which the visuals and the literature marry each other, earning new nuances and a new way of expression. This research was developed with the main objective of analysing the impact of comics in the teaching of chemistry concepts, or, more specifically, if a comic predisposes the student to learn chemistry concepts and if the language of those comics permeates the learning process, to the point that it will remembered later, in an evaluation of the students learning. To this objective, we used a qualitative methodology and we based the analysis in the narrative language literature authored by Bruner. We selected a class from the first year of high school in a public school from Belo Horizonte to undertake this research. A comic involving the concept of density was produced and used in three different moments of this work. In the first one, the students read the comic and were invited to recount it and to solve a similar problem, albeit slightly different from the problem that the characters faced. Three weeks after this class, the students did a written test that contained a problem that refers to the concept present in the comic. Around three moths after the class in which the comic was presented, there was an activity that resumes the problem of the written test, as an introduction to the kinectic-molecular model. The classes in which those activities took place were recorded in video and analysed. We noticed that the solution for the problem within the comic was concstantly referred to by the students, in different moments of this investigation. The fact that they refer to it so much may be attributed to the narrative nature of comics, which make them closer to the language that humans commonly use to interact to each other. A considerable share of the students was able to adapt their proposals to the new problem, but only when the solution of the problem was challenged by the researcher/teacher. We understand that comics represent an opportunity to help students in the creation of an inside narrative that accommodate better those chemistry concepts, making it easier to memorize and comprehend said concepts.