O espaço não formal revisitado: discussões acerca da educação química

Abstract

This dissertation characterizes the report of an investigation carried out throughout my masters whose goal was centered on the relevance of non-formal settings for the enrichment of the education in chemistry. In the investigative process surveys were used in some exploratory and semi-structured interviews in order to build a corpusof analysis based on the arguments of licensed teachers in chemistry. The theoretical discussion is supported by studies of John Dewey, who values personal practical experience in order to bring the school education into the social context of the student through educational experiences. The analysis process was guided by Zimanskiet al. (2010), which led us to organize themes, according to the research questions and the development of emerging categories of common issues before reports of respondents. The reports analysis shows that the surveyed teachers valorize the planning of activities in non-formal spaces as a way to show to the student the various applications of chemistry in usually basis to lead them to the practical experience that can promote discussions on issues of job security, visualization of industrial processes, among others, and, finally, motivate them to seek lessons that can often be inhibited by current educational reality. However, these teachers emphasize that current working conditions in schools offer many obstacles that hinder the adoption of this type of activity, which have been mentioned in the interviews in a quite emphatically way; the lack of resource funding in schools for such visits, the high number of students per class and the lack of support from other professionals could be pointed out. We noticed also that the Science Center of UFJF played an important role for the initial and continuing training of two teachers investigated. Most respondents stressed the importance of that space for suitable conditions to allow experiments that could be performed in a safe way and be enjoyable for visitors. At the end, we can infer that it is clear that the integration of different educational strategies may provide different approaches to the student to realize that the chemical language can also be a way of reading the everyday world that allows us to thinking about our real world.