Discursos de professores sobre ensino de ciências por investigação

Abstract

This thesis examined the experience of a group of teacher trainers and meaning making processes related to the expression inquiry teaching used to identify the teaching training program, in a distance education course, in which the group was involved. In this process the subjects of the research tutors, coordinators and authors of the teaching modules established tensions and consensus, not only about inquiry teaching, but also about possibilities and constraints of science education projects. To develop the research we adopted a theoretical perspective based on Bakhtin and his circle, as well as the distinction, made by Jerome Bruner, between paradigmatic thought and narrative thought, and the way this author characterizes the modalities of human thought. In this research, the main theoretical and methodological decisions were made based on the perspectives of these authors. To understand the meaning making related to inquiry teaching we considered as a starting point the dialogic process of interactions between the subjects involved. For this purpose, we followed the enunciations of the members of the group in their collective and collaborative spaces, in interviews we conducted with them and in the set of writing teaching materials produced for the course. In the analysis of such materials, we kept the link between what is said and the way it is said. The meanings constructed by the subjects are related to their experiences, and mediated by a diversity of texts. That is the reason why we found so many stories and tensions within the group. Based on the awareness of such tensions, and since the beginning of the course, attempts were made in pursuit of meaning stabilization and consensus in the group. Nevertheless, it was not possible to reach within the group a definition, in the classical sense, of the expression inquiry teaching. The meaning attributed to this expression seems to be best described by a narrative thought, from which it became dependent on a set of examples, cases or real life situations connected with the actorssocial practices interpreted by each one of them.