Habilidades investigativas no ensino fundamentado em modelagem

Abstract

Discussions about science teaching during the last decades emphasised the need of favouring teaching situations aimed at the development of general skills related to scientific reasoning. This would highlight the knowledge building process together with the acquisition of specific content knowledge. From such a perspective, modelling-based teaching can highly favoured such knowledge development, because modelling is one of the main science building processes. Modelling activities, as assumed in this study, are investigative activities that require an active knowledge building from the generation of answers in this case, models for some problems. In so doing, students have the opportunity to develop their content knowledge whilst they develop cognitive, procedural, and metacognitive skills related to scientific thinking. However, there is a lack of studies that investigate which skills are used by students in this learning process; when, during the learning process, such skills are needed; and how students learn about the modelling process itself during the activities. In this study, we investigated (i) which skills are used and developed by medium level students when participating in chemistry modelling-based teaching activities, and (ii) how such activities contribute to students knowledge about modelling and its role in science. We analysed data from a 26 student (15-17 years) class collected from three modelling-based teaching strategies. Data were collected from class video-recording, students written activities, filed notes, and individual interviews conducted with a sample of students. We produced a specific analysis instrument composed of categories that allowed us to assess how each skill could be demonstrate itself. The analysis of the process experienced by the students made it possible to identify the main skills students used during the modelling-based teaching activities, the using frequency of such skills, and the relationships between the skills and the modelling stages. Concerning with learning about modelling, we identified the modelling elements that students performed during the whole process, and their own knowledge about such elements. From our results, we concluded that participating in modelling-based teaching activities has contributed to students use and development of some scientific investigative skills and to the development of their view about the nature of science.