O ensino de ciências por investigação na educação superior: um ambiente para o estudo da aprendizagem científica

Abstract

This thesis shows the results of a research about the learning environment provided by a module offered by the Biochemistry and Immunology department of a Federal University Institution. The module has as its objective to provide its students with inquiry activities. For that, groups of students carry out open works that are characterized as research projects that demand the mobilizing of concepts, procedures and abilities related to scientific investigation and/or biochemistry. The strategy used in this module is similar to the approach in science teaching where the inquiry is considered a fundamental point for scientific education in nations such as the USA and Great Britain. In Brazil, adopting this approach is incipient, which demands many reflections about its real potential. Therefore, this thesis aims at analyzing the learning environment provided by the investigated module to verify which is their contribution to the students formation in a course that is forming scientists. The data analyzed in this paper were obtained through written and filmed productions of a live group performing who dedicated to a project that investigated if there was any repellent property, first in the chives and then on cloves, on an ant species, the phantom ant. The group intended to develop a natural product which could be used in domestic environments, especially kitchens. Furthermore, an interview was carried out with one of the teachers of this subject. Theoretical and methodological supports from science sociology studies, epistemological studies of scientific education and activity theory, were used to analyze the data. These different theoretical referential allowed to: i) describe and analyze the module structure and the activity of the investigated group, which helped highlight the different group elements that took part in the studied situation; ii) delineate the development of the group activity, explicating the main events that molded it during the semester; iii) characterize the different moments of the activity, distinguishing the production situations from the communication ones; iv) analyze the scientific culturing processes, evidencing the transforming processes of an action in epistemic operations and; v) study the decision making processes providing an understanding of the discussions lived by the group in the development of its research project. The data analyzes provided the evidencing of learning events in and by practice that happened because of the engagement of the group in the activities, mainly in the search of solutions for different problems and contradictions. The decision making processes exams allowed to outline the aspects that oriented the negotiations engendered in the investigation course, identifying how convictions are changed and how some determined statements are valued. Besides, it reveals factors that orient, delimit and transform this school investigative activity. Therefore, it is believed that this thesis offers subsidies to understand the limits and potential of the investigative activities as an environment that can or cannot create opportunities for the students to participate, share and experience practices similar to those which are found in natural science laboratories