Representações sociais de professores sobre o ensino de ciências da natureza: um estudo com egressos da Licenciatura em Educação do Campo da UFVJM

Abstract

This research investigated the social representations of teaching natural sciences alongside teachers who have graduated from the Bachelor's Degree in Rural Education at the Federal University of the Jequitinhonha and Mucuri Valleys. Based on the hypothesis that the teacher who graduates from the Field Education reference matrix faces the challenges of becoming a professional who aims to guarantee the protagonism of the subjects and the contexts of the countryside; of building and guaranteeing a school based on the law that is capable of meeting the demands of the community in which they work and; to build a school project associated to a project for the countryside and society from a sustainable and emancipatory perspective; our objective was to analyze the challenges experienced by the research subjects in teaching basic education, more precisely at the Padre João Afonso State School, an institution located in the city of Itamarandiba, in the Upper Jequitinhonha Valley region. Regarding the teaching of natural sciences, the results show that the subjects of this research are constantly concerned with articulating ethical-political issues relating to the ways of producing and reproducing life in the countryside to their teaching practices. Thus, their social representations of the teaching of natural sciences reveal challenges that can be identified in the need to bring the issues that permeate the rural way of life into classroom practice, including infrastructure and a lack of basic resources related to the way in which the right to education has been met by the Minas Gerais State Department of Education. The precarious offer of school transport, the lack of teaching materials contextualized to the peasant reality and the lack of adequate laboratories are the main challenges identified in the teachers' narratives. As for the possibilities, the ways of thinking, feeling and acting in relation to the teaching processes built on the dialog between popular knowledge and scientific knowledge in the area of Natural Sciences point to the relevant intellectual and political role played by the subjects of this research in the context of their communities.