Energizando: um jogo role-playing game (RPG) para abordagem do tema energia nos anos finais do ensino fundamental

Abstract

The following study analyzed the arrangement of human components and materials engaged during the development of the pedagogical game “Energizing”, an educational resource drawn to teach Science through the final years of elementary school. An important concept that influenced the choice of “energy” as the theme was the fact that it is found in nature as a part of a system that demands a visualization of processes, both by teachers and students. The main theoretical-methodological reference in place is the Actor-Network Theory (ANT), proposed by Bruno Latour and associates that presents a comprehension that intends to recover the meaning of the word “social” as an association. The theoretical approach of Science, Technology, Society and Environment (CTSA) was also accessed as a theoretical foundation. The data for the following study were obtained by the reports made during some classes on the professional master's degree, in which happened some presentations related to the project, and also, through notes made by the researcher herself, some due to suggestions from the guidance counselor. The text analysis of the game’s script was made with the support of the software Iramuteq through the generation of similarity trees, which provided the tracing of interactions between the different elements used in the narrative. In this regard, the discussion of results covered two perspectives: firstly, the analysis of the socio-technical network engaged on the professional master’s degree and later the network of the script created for the game. On the socio-technical network initially used to think about the product’s development, the application of materials such as slides for presentations and spreadsheets from the research ethics committee became noticed, apart from master’s students and teachers from the program, elements that arranged new associations. Mediators that alternate, for example, the initial name of the game also included knowledge that was not foreseen for the game’s story, have brought, at this point, some interest traverses. As we follow through, the associations present on the game’s script evidenced aspects such as the potential of the “amusement park” territory, the presence of canonic examples of the teaching of sciences on the “school” territory, the access to chemical and historical knowledge on the “steel industry” territory and the presence of science history on the “university” territory. The analysis confirms still that the concept of energy has been present on the socio-technical network weaved on the text as a balancing process and showed that the game can be an important pedagogical resource for the learning of one of the most important themes for Sciences teaching.