Análise da atividade discursiva em uma sala de aula de ciências: a química dos ciclos biogeoquímicos no ensino fundamental

Abstract

This dissertation examines a research conducted during this work in order to investigate how chemistry concepts are introduced and discussed in elementary school, cycle II, emphasizing the dialogic interactions that occur in a science classroom. We therefore sought to investigative an elementary school 6th grade class that was studying the Biogeochemical Cycles, looking at which concepts and terms of the chemical language were used by the teacher in her explanations and how students appropriated this language in their speech. We adopted the theoretical reflections on language of Bakhtin and Vigotski using whose work establish the relationship between the development of scientific and spontaneous concepts in children. To perform the analysis of the discursive activity in the classroom science we adopt the analytical tool proposed by Mortimer and Scott (2002). By analyzing the discursive interactions we realized that the chemical concepts are introduced by the teacher in her speech to explain the studied phenomenon. At other times, these concepts are introduced in order to answer the questions generated by the students. Overall, some students start to use these concepts in their speech, naturally, following the teacher’s speech and other students found difficulty with the verbalism, characteristic of scientific concepts. But in both cases, the concepts are used without concern for the formalism of the meaning to the scientific community, since the generalization process in search of the true concept formation is just starting. Observing the teacher’s initial formation and her attitudes in the classroom we were able to see the evolution of her conception about teaching and learning, from a disciplinary vision of science education in elementary school, to a conception of education that incorporates the different contributions of chemistry, physics and biology. We believe that this integrated way of approaching the teaching of science, in which chemistry is an area that speaks to the others, allows the student to build a chemical way of thinking for the further series in education as well as his role as a citizen.