O estudo de caso aplicado ao ensino médio: o olhar do professor e do aluno sobre essa estratégia de ensino

Abstract

This study discusses the Case Study Education Strategy (CSES), an instrument based on active student participation. CSES is aimed at learning specific knowledge linked to the development of skills that can contribute to the exercise of citizenship, which is a higher education goal according to LDB 9394/96. CSES consists of investigative cases that bring up a problem in which the student is asked to solve, and the teacher acts primarily as a mediator. This strategy is seldom used in science teaching at the college level, and even more rarely applied in high-school. In order to promote the CSES, we conducted one short course for Chemistry teachers at schools in the city of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais. Based in time availability of 12 participating teachers, three of them were invited to apply CSES in one of their high school classes. Founded on this experience, we investigate the notions of teacher and student about this teaching strategy, in order to learn about CSES possibilities and limitations of usage in high-school. To achieve this goal, some classes that permeated the implementation of activity were observed; cases proposed by the teachers were evaluated; a semi-structured interview was conducted with the three teachers; and the students answered a questionnaire. The interpretation of the corpus built by the preceding actions was performed by content analysis, with the formation of meaningful categories. The results showed that teachers developed narratives addressing timely social issues, which have been able to evoke discussion and awareness, as well as being interesting and close to the daily life of students. It was also verified that teachers have understood the essence of CSES, verifying the potential of this sort of activity as a contribution to the formation of a well-aware citizen; the teachers expressed the opinion that such experience may actually contribute to their pedagogical practice. Teachers also highlighted noteworthy obstacles that permeated the activity execution, as time consumption, necessary resources for research and difficulties in the preparation of the cases-studies. In addition, students also expressed satisfaction with the strategy, revealing that became fond of the topic discussed, and enjoyed working as groups, and how the activity was conducted; the students noted that CSES activity brought up contributions like the awareness about the proposed theme, the acquisition of new knowledge, and the development of skills.