Análise estrutural e multimodal de analogias em uma sala de aula de química

Abstract

This research is among studies about the use of analogies in Science Education and also among those investigating the interactions between teachers and students as multimodal events, under the guidance of Social Semiotics. Our research problem was: what are the relations between the characteristics of the analogies built by a seasoned Chemistry teacher and the expressive resources used by him? According to Dedre Gentners Structure-Mapping Theory of Analogies, as well as the Keith Holyoack's and Paul Thagards Multiconstraint theory, we conceive analogies as relational comparisons, that is, a kind of comparison in which the focus is the establishment of correspondences between the relations in a base domain (or a familiar domain) used as a source of knowledge, and those existent in a unknown domain, or a less familiar one, that is the target of a comprehension process. According to Social Semiotics we presume that the construction of analogies in Science classrooms involves the orchestration of multiple modes of communication. We generated our data from audio and video recordings of Chemistry Classes. These classes occurred in a private institution of higher education in Belo Horizonte city, during the first semester of 2014. Our analysis showed: (i) the complexity of the established relations inside analogies and the way they are prepared from less complex comparisons; (ii) the potential of structural mapping of the comparisons as a tool for understanding this discursive resource as a mediator for Chemistry teaching; (iii) the importance of the orchestration of multiple modes of communication as a central aspect of the establishment of correspondences that compounds analogies. In summary, our unit of analysis allowed us to understand the articulation between structural and expressive aspects of the construction proccess of analogies in a classroom.