Práticas de interpretação em ambientes de aprendizagem de física

Abstract

Activities based on computer simulations, pencil and paper exercises, as well as laboratory practices were combined to give students opportunity to experience different learning environments. The interactions between students group were first audio- and video- recorded, then compared. By doing so, we identified and analyzed episodes in which the interactions contributed to the two research foci: Identification and description of distinguishing procedures of a classroom place where a specific social practice takes place. Identification and comprehension of aspects of students interpretative practices when those are engrossed in activities involving representations of models in Physics. Studying situated cognition, phenomenology and biological foundations of cognition, we were directed towards the analyses of perception and the role it plays in the interpretative act. These theoretical studies were combined with a study of ethno-methodology. That lead us to a descriptive approach to the classroom. We wrote vignettes of situations as we listened to the recordings. These vignettes constituted second order data, which were used to delimitate episodes for further and deeper analyses. Excerpts of such vignettes became the heart of the description, a basis for our reflection on teachers and students actions in the classroom. We take the perception as an essential aspect of the interpreting and the learning acts. We emphasize the feedback process interplayed by perception, conceptualization and action. We also discuss the immanent aspects of perception, highlight the way we framed the experiences students have gone through, and draw attention to how those teaching strategies bring perceptual elements to students consciousness perceptual elements which compound, in an immanent way, their experience. The classroom environment is treated as a specific practice community and description elements of the communities investigated are presented. Finally, we discuss the consequences of treating classrooms as venue for specific social practices to evolve, giving special attention to factors that hinder the development of an authentic scientific practice within such venues.