Abordando o conceito de energia mecânica através da experimentação

Abstract

It is recognized that in traditional teaching, specifically Teaching by Transmission, in which the teacher is the one who dominates the content, the student keeps a passive, non-reflective and non-questioning attitude. This attitude on the part of teachers and students goes against what is understood as a significant teachinglearning process, in the sense of a process through which a new information (a new knowledge) relates in a non-arbitrary and substantive (non-literal) way to the cognitive structure of the learner. In this work, we try to overcome passivity on the part of the students and promote a meaningful learning through a didactic sequence which has approached the concepts of mechanical energy and its conservation by the experimentation bias. The didactic sequence was composed of 14 classes, being the first and the last destined to, respectively, the application of a Pre-test and Posttest. These were composed of open ended questions in which students answered textually questions involving problem-situations about mechanical energy. The remaining 12 classes were destined to experimental activities that permeated concepts related specifically to the energies kinetic, potential gravitational and elastic. Some classes were devoted to the reading of texts and the exhibition of videos related to the daily life of the students. In other classes the formalization of the concepts of mechanical energy took place. All material textually produced by the students in the Pre and Post-test was submitted to content analysis. This analysis allowed identifying three types of conceptions, namely scientific conceptions (SC), partially scientific conceptions (PSC) and non-scientific conceptions (NSC). It was noticed that the didactic sequence used in the present research promoted a notorious change in the conceptions of the students, going from non-scientific conceptions to scientific and partially scientific conceptions. We therefore consider that the use of a didactic sequence as used in this research presents a great potential to approach the concept of mechanical energy and its conservation.