Oportunidades de aprendizagem de ciências da natureza e relações de gênero: uma análise de interações discursivas e de diferentes dimensões espaço-temporais em sala de aula

Abstract

The aim of this study is to understand how science learning opportunities constitute and are constituted by gender relations, involving different spatio-temporal dimensions. The research is part of a larger project that followed a group of children over the first three years of Elementary School in science and language lessons of a public lottery school. Our first interest was to understand relationships between learning processes and different contexts. Based on a literature review related to science teaching and learning and an immersion in studies about the construct context in the field of Language, we indicated an expressive focus on the instructional context. There are few studies that seek to explore other contexts, for example, relationships with family and community experiences, institutional and curricular policies, gender, race and class issues, and cultural aspects. We offer contributions to this literature gap, considering the relevant intercessions between these contextual elements and the everyday life in classroom. Our theoretical-methodological approaches were based on Ethnography in Education to describe, analyze and interpret discursive interactions in science lessons, in order to understand the classroom as culture. The research design was guided by the logic we called “Ethnographic Hourglass”: broader analyzes were followed by a narrowing process and, later, new broadening analytical procedures. First, we analyzed the tree year’s project records, such as field notes, videotapes, and representations, trying to identify events in which elements from different contexts emerged in interactions of science lessons. The selected events were analyzed again in order to identify frameclashes, situations in which there were breaks of expectations in the group. A historical and contrastive analysis resulted in the selection of specific events in which relations between the science instructional context and gender were identified. At these events, the class discussed the sexual dimorphism of an insect, the stick bug. At this point, we selected an event capable of anchoring microscopic analyzes. Using ethnographic tools, we analyzed the discursive interactions of this event, the hourglass vertex. Finally, in the new broadening analytical procedures, we sought to interpret the interactions based on backward/forward mapping and establish relationships between gender and science learning opportunities. We used Butler’s theoretical contributions to interpret gender. The results indicate how the participants negotiated gender relations reflecting and refracting the gender norm, a process that was articulated to science learning opportunities. Gender promoted a movement in the science instructional context: from a certainty situation, the group engaged in a productive uncertainty, which involved the participants’ engagement in discussions related to the conceptual, epistemic and social domains of scientific knowledge. In this process, alignment with the gender norm meant not only failing to recognize what was proposed in the discussions but moving away from such proposals. The instructional context also had an influence on the gender negotiation. The possibility of disagreement and changes in the questions over the lessons were resources with relevant implications in the movements of reflection and refraction of the gender norm. This study offers contributions to Science Education field by proposing ways of relating learning processes to different spatio-temporal dimensions that constitute our social life. The results allow us to look the classroom as a space-time in which students negotiate macrossocial categories and deal with fundamental knowledge to position themselves in the society. We indicate implications for public policies, especially for discussions about gender in the prescribed and lived curriculum. Finally, we encourage studies that seek to understand the classroom life in its complexity.