"O bicho-pau é assim": introduzindo crianças à observação com propósitos científicos

Abstract

The present work deals with teaching science through research focused on the construction of scientific knowledge as a situated social practice that involves scientifically oriented questions, prioritizing evidence when answering questions, formulating evidence-based explanations, evaluating explanations in the light of other propositions and communication and justification of these explanations. It aims to analyze the ways in which a pedagogue teacher introduced children in a 1st year class to the practice of observation for scientific purposes. Using Ethnography in Education, aspects of International Sociolinguistics and Microethnographic Discourse Analysis as a theoretical-methodological reference, as well as the Multimodal Theory of Social Semiotics, macroscopic analyzes were carried out, based on the construction of classroom charts, timelines and maps of events, as well as the use of contextual cues to transcribe face-to-face interactions into message units and to construct descriptive and analytical frameworks. As a result, the interaction between the students and the teacher provides evidence of the process of building distinctions between everyday observations and scientific observations, since the latter are characterized by being guided by a question, demanding prolonged engagement and recording. through one or several modes of communication. Therefore, the use of elements from the microethnographic analysis of discourse and multimodality made it possible to show how the contrast between everyday and scientific observations was constructed by the teacher based on the use of verbs, pauses, emphasis and repetitions. Displacements, gestures, speech, body posture and drawing can be understood as modes of communication that were orchestrated by the teacher to promote the participation of children in this new social practice. These results can contribute to the initial and continued training of teachers, dialoguing directly with the pedagogical practice in a way situated in the classroom.