O ensino de ciências por investigação em escolas da rede pública

Abstract

The unsatisfactory results of public education in large-scale assessments like PISA, SAEB and SIMAVE, are often subjects of reports in the media. However, simultaneous with such evaluations there is the claim for the need of improving science education in view of the new role it plays in the formation of the citizen of the new millennium. Several proposals curriculum such as those sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, 1990) and National Research Concil (NRC, 1996, 2000), for the North- american educational system, as well as the National Curriculum Standards (PCN, 1998), comissioned by the Brazilian Ministry of Education (MEC), emphasize that science education needs to provide students with authentic science learning opportunities. The core idea is that students should not only learn the products of scientific activity, that is, scientific laws, models and theories, but also they should learn about science and do science. Thus, this research attempted to develop a methodology for evaluating which would be able to evaluate general aspects of students procedural knowledge from public schools at the beginning of their secondary education, which corresponds to years 9 to 11. A type of knowledge that the specialized literature suggests that the methodology of teaching by inquiry is capable of developing. In this research has also proposed to assess what kind of difficulties the students of state schools face when learning science through investigative activities. For this end, we elaborate a teaching sequence to address different aspects of scientific inquiry to create an appropriate learning environment and assessed students understandings on three occasions. They were assessed prior to the sequence, after its end and after the school holiday of the participants. 67 students enrolled in year 9 of regular public schools from the state of Minas Gerais. They were taught by two Physics teachers. We believe that the methodology developed has enabled the construction of a vivid image of aspects of the students procedural knowledge and unveiled their difficulties in learning science through inquiry. The results indicate that students come to high school with a very limited procedural knowledge, and indicate possibilities and constraints to the planning of investigative activities to promote scientific literacy over the high school years.