Formação continuada de professores de ciências para o ensino de astronomia nos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental

Situated at the intersection of Continuing Formation, Science Teaching and content of astronomy, the research aims to discuss this problematic : What are the challenges encountered in a continuous formation in service of science teachers of the early years of elementary school with contents of astronomy? Aiming to answer this question, we carried out a collaborative action research in a school of Natal / RN, with 6 teachers who teach or lectured Natural Sciences in the early years of elementary school. The study involved 14 encounters of continuos formation in service, to enable a better understanding criticism and propositive concerning the teaching science, especially some content of astronomy for the initial years, through a shared discussion. To this end, we consider that more profound understanding of astronomical knowledge allows the establishment of relationships and connections between theoretical knowledge and the daily teaching practice. All discussions were recorded on audio and transcripts. This research was realized using questionnaires and diary, however, the audio recording was its principal working instrument. About the data collected, several issues emerged as the little field of conceptual content, several misconceptions among teachers about the content of astronomy, lack of adequate space in the school environment to study and the need for collective reflection on the practice. Finally, is indicated that the contents of astronomy should be used in classrooms of Sciences, provided that teaching plan of action consider the existence of diverse alternative conceptions about the subject, among both teachers and students, and the need of permanente continuing education in the teaching

Controvérsias sobre a natureza da luz: uma aplicação didática

Researches in the field of Science Teaching have shown, in recent decades, that students from high school level have difficulties in understanding basic concepts of science, in general, and physics, in particular. The specific literature indicates, as a priority for a scientific education of better quality, a more structured understanding about science. This work proposes the introduction of elements of History and Philosophy of Science in high school as an aid to learning the concepts of optics, in general, and of aspects concerning the nature of science, specifically. Making use of historical episodes regarding the controversy on the nature of light, especially during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as clippings of the history of optics in relation to the development of models that explain the process of vision, we formulated a teaching unit and implemented it on two night high school classes of a public school in the city of Parnamirim (RN). The unit involved, primarily, the reading of three historical texts containing written questions followed by a collective debate ("moot"). The results indicated some difficulties in overcoming the misconceptions related to the process of vision and the nature of light. Nevertheless, we believe that the teaching unit has succeeded in relation to the learning of most students, both in relation to a better understanding of science as well as concepts of optics

Citologia: uma proposta formativa na EaD - UFRN a partir de concepções alternativas

Learning difficulties can have a direct influence on the teaching-learning process of students by reducing their school performance. One factor that may contribute to this negative influence on learning refers to the presence of alternative conceptions, which may have different origins in the educational process. It is of paramount importance, for teachers, for example, to identify the concepts and the difficulties of their students in order for that knowledge can be able to contribute significantly to improve the teaching and learning process. From the following considerations, the present study (still in progress) aims to investigate aspects related to the concepts and difficulties of graduating students in relation to the contents of Biology. The participants of the research were undergraduate students in Biological Sciences from UFRN, studying by Distance Learning (Educação a Distância). To develop the survey, questionnaires were developed to identify the contents in Biology that these students have more difficulties as well as an interview to raise misconceptions regarding the content of cytology. Another tool developed was a textbook evaluation form, which was applied in conjunction with a questionnaire in workshops (short courses) in order to identify possible errors and mistakes that could jeopardize the process of teaching and learning, such as the importance that these learners assign to textbooks in the educational process. From the data collected, a booklet on the content of cytology was developed as a product. It is expected that it can be applied in classrooms in order to improve the teaching and learning in references to Biology, to minimize, for example, alternative conceptions than can occur related to the theme

Alternância no uso dos modos indicativo e subjuntivo em orações subordinadas substantivas: uma comparação entre o português do Brasil e o francês do Canadá

The purpose of this work is to analyze the use of the indicative mood, instead of the subjunctive prescribed by the normative grammar, in complement clauses introduced by the conjunction que in Brazilian Portuguese. Contexts of use of the subjunctive according to grammatical prescription, and contexts of fluctuation on the use of that verbal mood were analyzed, in an attempt to investigate what interferes on the choice of the mood by the user of the language. This study is based on North-American Functional Linguistics theoretical perspective, oriented to analyzing language in use, in the light of the principles of grammaticalization and markedness. The results obtained support that the contexts that favor the indicative over the subjunctive are those composed by a complement clause functioning as a direct object the unmarked clause of all complement clauses and by a verb on the main sentence that belongs to the semantic field of low certainty, corresponding to the epistemic sub-mode the unmarked category of the deontic sub-mode. The results indicate that pragmatics and semantics factors influence the language user on the choice of the verbal mood. This research also presents comparative data on the use of the indicative mood in place of the subjunctive in Brazilian Portuguese and Canadian French, aiming to providing suggestions on language teaching

A relação gramatical objeto direto : implicações para o ensino de língua materna

This paper attempts to investigate the discourse manifestations of the grammatical relation direct object with respect to the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties that underlie this element. The research adopts theoretical orientation of the functionalism from North American and Brazilian schools inspired in Givón (1995, 2001), Hopper and Thompson (1980), Chafe (1979), Furtado da Cunha, Oliveira, Martelotta (2003) inter alia. From functionalism, the research uses principles of iconicity, markedness and informativity and it analize categories of transitivity, grounding and animacy. This research is anchored in prototype model (TAYLOR 1995); construction grammar model (GOLDBERG 1996, 2002). Both theoretical orientations share the view that language is a malleable living organism subject to socio-cultural context. Grammar is then the result of created, maintained, and systematized linguistic patterns developed from and used for language use. According to a functional linguistics and cognitivist linguistics verbs are stored in the speakers lexicon in syntactic-semantic frames which are more frequent. These frames carry information concerning obligatory and optional arguments and the semantic roles these arguments take in the clause. The analysis focuses on the semantic type of the verbs and its relationship with the argument encoded as a direct object observing the aspectual nature of verbs. Direct objects are classified according to their morphology (lexical or pronominal noun phrase), semantic role, informational content and animacy. This study discusses pedagogical implications with relation to how the grammatical concepts touched on this paper are treated in school textbooks. The empirical data come from Corpus Discurso & Gramática: a língua falada e escrita na cidade do Natal (FURTADO DA CUNHA, 1998). This corpus is composed of texts that contain spoken and written modalities. These modalities are in turn organized according to different types: personal narratives, retold narrative, description of preferred place, procedural place, procedural description and report on argumentation. The sample data totals 40 texts produced by four language consultants of the last graduation date. The paper shows that the same syntactic structures (formed through Subject-Verb-Object) correspond to different semantic-pragmatic structures in relation to specific communicative purposes even verb is an event, process or state. The argument structure are not aleatory but are related to experience; that is the way humans conceptualize the world and talk about it

"Eu pensei que ia sair daqui falando inglês": um estudo sistêmico-funcional sobre papéis sociais atribuídos por alunos de um curso de Letras/Inglês

Research in the area of teacher training in English as a Foreign Language (CELANI, 2003, 2004, 2010; PAIVA, 2000, 2003, 2005; VIEIRA-ABRAHÃO, 2010) articulates the complexity of beginning teachers classroom contexts aligned with teaching language as a social and professional practice of the teacher in training. To better understand this relationship, the present study is based on a corpus of transcribed interviews and questionnaires applied to 28 undergraduate students majoring in Letters/English emphasis, at a public university located in the interior of the Western Amazon region, soliciting their opinions about the reforms made in the curriculum of this Major. Interviews and questionnaires were used as data collection instruments to trace a profile of the students organized in Group 1, with freshmen and sophomore undergraduates who are following the 2009 curriculum, and Group 2, with junior and senior undergraduates who are following the 2006 curriculum. The objectives are to identify, to characterize and to analyze the types of pronouns, roles and social actors represented in the opinions of these students in relation to their teacher training curriculum. The theoretical support focuses on the challenge of historical and contemporary routes from English teachers initial education programs (MAGALHÃES; LIBERALLI, 2009; PAVAN; SILVA, 2010; ALVAREZ, 2010; VIANA, 2011; PAVAN, 2012). Our theoretical perspective is based on the Systemic Functional Grammar of Halliday (1994), Halliday and Hasan (1989), Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), Eggins (1994; 2004) and Thompson (2004). We focus on the concept of the Interpersonal meaning, specifically regarding the roles articulated in the studies by Delu (1991), Thompson and Thetela (1995), and in the Portuguese language such as Ramos (1997), Silva (2006) and Cabral (2009). Moreover, we ascribe van Leeuwen s (1997; 2003) theory of Representation of Social Actors as a theoretical framework in order to identify the sociological aspect of social actors represented in the students discourse. Within this scenario, the analysis unfolds on three levels: grammatical (pronouns), semantic (roles), and discursive (social actors). For the analysis of interpersonal realizations present in the students opinions, we use the computational program WordSmith Tools (SCOTT, 2010) and its applications Wordlist and Concord to quantify the occurrences of the pronouns I, You and They, which characterize the roles and social actors of the corpus. The results show that the students assigned the following roles to themselves: (i) apprentice to express their initial process of English language learning; (ii) freshman to reveal their choice of Major in Letters/English emphasis; (iii) future teacher to relate their expectations towards a practicing professional. To assign the roles to professors in the major, the students used the metaphor of modality (I think) to indicate the relationship of teacher training, while they are in the role of a student and as a future teacher. From these evidences the representation of the students as social actors emerges in roles such as: (i) active roles; (ii) passive roles and (iii) personalized roles. The social actors represented in the opinions of the students reflect the inclusion of these roles assigned to the actions expressed about their experiences and expectations derived from their teacher training classroom

Conectores sequenciadores e e aí em contos e narrativas de experiência pessoal escritos por alunos de ensino fundamental: uma abordagem sociofuncionalista

In this dissertation, based on two theoretical frameworks, American functionalism and variationist sociolinguistics, I take as subject the sequence connectors E and AÍ, which has the grammatical function of indicating retroactive-propeller sequenciation of information. I analyze the variable use of these connectors in texts written by students from two public schools in the city of Natal, RN, attending at the time of data collection (the year 2012), two distinct levels of basic education: the sixth and the ninth year. The students who contributed to this research wrote, as part of their activities in the classroom, texts of two narrative genres: narrative of personal experience (non-fictional) and short story (fictional). In addition, these students and their Portuguese teachers answered a test of linguistic attitude in which they gave their opinions regarding the appropriateness of the use of connectors E and AÍ in contexts of speech and writing marked by distinct degrees of formality. The results obtained by means of quantitative analysis showed different tendencies of linguistic, social and stylistic distribution of connectors E and AÍ in the narrative texts written by the students. I related these results to the action of two principles: the principle of persistence, linked to the process of change by grammaticalization, and the principle of stylistic markedness. Besides, I took into account the answers provided by students and teachers to the test of linguistic attitude for refine the interpretation of the results

Abordagem cognitiva da construção deverbal x-dor: contribuições para o ensino do português

This work analyzes deverbal nominalizations with the sufix dor in Brazilian Portuguese, under the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics, more specifically, the Construction Grammar. The aim is to determine the general features of interpretation that characterize this deverbal construction and its use in formal writing. Based on the cognitive assumption that grammatical structure is motivated, explained, and determined by the structure of cognitive patterns, created from our experience in the world, and by the communicative function of language, the dor deverbal is treated as a polysemic grammatical construction. In the composition of V+dor, the relation rootsuffix is focused, through a characterization of the syntactic-semantic nature of the verb and the values of the suffix. Among the different values conventionally related to the XDOR construction, the agentive is considered as the prototypical sense. The relation between the other values and the prototype is explained by cognitive abilities and discourse motivations. The deverbal construction X-DOR is also interpreted as a valency noun that, like an action nominal, retains the argument structure of the deriving predicate. It is also intended to demonstrate the textual function of this deverbal construction, as a device of information condensing and anaphoric recovery. The data were taken from Veja magazine and the approach is qualitative (explicative), with quantitative support

A ferramenta VoiceThread em uma abordagem hibrida: o desenvolvimento da produção oral e da habilidade de noticing na aprendizagem de inglês como L2

VoiceThread (VT) is a collaborative and asynchronous web 2.0 tool, which permits the creation of oral presentations with the help of images, documents, texts and voice, allowing groups of people to browse and contribute with comments using several options: voice (microphone or cell phone), text and audio-file or video (webcam) (BOTTENTUIT JUNIOR, LISBÔA E COUTINHO, 2009). The hybrid experience with VoiceThread allows learners to plan their speech before recording it, without the pressure often existent in the classroom. Furthermore, the presentations can be recorded several times, enabling students to listen to them, notice the gaps in their oral production (noticing) and edit innumerous times before publishing them online. In this perspective, oral production is seen as a process of L2 acquisition, not only as practice of already existent knowledge, because it can stimulate the learner to process the language syntactically (SWAIN, 1985; 1995). In this context, this study aims to verify if there is a relation between the oral production of the learners more specifically the grammatical accuracy and the global oral grade and their noticing capacity, how the systematic practice with VoiceThread, in a hybrid approach, can impact the learners global oral development, their oral production in terms of fluency (number of words per minute), accuracy (number of errors in hundred words), and complexity (number of dependent clauses per minute), and on their noticing capacity (SCHMIDT, 1990; 1995; 2001), that is, the learner s capacity of noticing the gaps existent in their oral production. In order to answer these research questions, 49 L2 learners of English were divided into an experimental group (25 students) and a control group (24 students). The experimental group was exposed to the hybrid approach with VT during two months and, through a pre- and post-test, we verified if this systematic practice would positively influence these participants oral production and noticing capacity. These results were compared to the pre- and post-test scores from the control group, which was not exposed to VT. Finally, learners impressions in relation to the use of this tool were also sought through a questionnaire applied after the post-test. The results indicate that there is a statistically significant correlation between the learners speech production (accuracy and global oral grade) and their noticing capacity. Besides, it was verified a positive impact of VoiceThread on the learners speech production variables and on their noticing capacity. They also reveal a positive reaction by the learners in relation to the hybrid experience with this web tool

Construções com tópico marcado em cartas pessoais brasileiras dos séculos XVIII, XIX E XX

This dissertation is a research on the marked topic construction (CT) in Brazilian personal letters from eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The goal of our research is to verify if CT are present in the writing of Brazilians born in the centuries in question. Our research focus is based on the assumptions of generative theory (CHOMSKY 1981; 1986), which states that grammar is internalized in the mind / brain of the writers, with the emphasis on studies of grammatical change, as pointed texts by Paixão de Sousa (2004), Carneiro (2005); Galves, Namiuti and Paixão de Sousa (2006) and Martins (2009). Our corpus was extracted from Projeto Para a História do Português Brasileiro (PHPB) and Cartas Brasileiras coletânea de fontes para o estudo do português. We selected forty-six correspondents who should be inserted into the two criteria set out in this research: to be Brazilian and be born in the centuries mentioned above, so that we could find legitimate topic constructions of PB. This work is based on researches by Pontes (1987), Mateus et al. (2003), Araujo (2006, 2009), Berlinck, Duarte and Oliveira (2009), which actively support us in the study of this linguistic phenomenon in Portuguese. The results show that the marked topic construction in our corpus appear on the writing of Brazilians since the second half of the eighteenth century, while the typical constructions in Brazilian Portuguese locative topic, subject topic and copy topic - are already reflected in the I-language of the writers born in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth century

Análise textual dos discursos: responsabilidade enunciativa no texto jurídico

This investigation aims at describing, analyzing and interpreting the Commitment in Initial Petitions, which is a genre circumscribed in the judicial domain. For this purpose, we have chosen sections, facts as found and relevant law , sections of the petition, with the understanding that, in this way, respectively, the narration of events, which gives margin to the propositioning to the judicial action, and the exposition of the law that upholds the author s intention. We base our discussion on the field of Linguistics, more precisely, Textual Discourse Analysis (TDA), whose theoretical basis is derived from Textual Linguistics (TL) and Enunciative Linguistics. We foreground, particularly, the way in which the author of texts, objects of analysis, use discursive strategies that evidence ER. The relevance of this study, then, is in the formation of a critique of the judicial text, as it conceives of a dialogical approach to the point of view, raising not only questions about the way in which a linguistic instance conceives an object of discourse, but also considering questions of language inherent to technical writing and, in this aspect, contributing to the work of those operating in Law about the many ways ER is formed in the body of a petition. We selected two categories to analyze that, according to Adam (2011), characterize the degree of ER in the textual material of the propositional enunciations: the different types of representation of speech and the indications of profile of mediators. In this sense, with this task as an objective, we base our study regarding point of view on Rabatel (2003, 2009a, 2010) with relation to the enunciative approach, including the study of PDV in polyphonic and dialogical theoretical framework to study the ER from different types of speech representations that conceive forms of transmission of discourse and the role of the enunciating subject, mainly the responsibility and the prerogative by the propositional contents. In the same way, intending to study the indications of the mediator profiles, we observed the postulations of Guentchéva (1994, 1996), which develop the notion of mediative grammatical categories, of which permit the linguistic marking of distance and engagement of the enunciator with regard to the information expressed. The methodology we adopted was based on qualitative research, of an interpretive and introspective nature, in light of the fact that his study focuses on processes and strategies underlying language use. The corpus of the research is comprised of Initial Petitions, which gave rise to actions originating in the Civil Court of Currais Novos County RN. The data analysis shows that an object of discourse is always perspective oriented and presents the point of view of one or more enunciators. Consequently, the producer of a text, using the PDV of other enunciators, influences and establishes the argumentative orientation of the text. In the same way, it evidences the relevance of the use of mediated constructions in the judicial text, as they function as strategies attenuated to the responsibility of the producer of the text with what is said, and at the same time points to a discourse of authority through the entrance of the sources of law. Moreover, it reveals the documental and international importance of this practice, at the same time that it exposes the compositional and normative difficulties with regard to legal and linguistic aspects

O uso de analogias para o ensino de equilíbrio químico no ensino médio: facilitação da aprendizagem ou transmissão de erros conceituais?

The use of analogies in high school is often useful for chemistry teaching, either on textbooks or by teachers in the classroom.This use is justified by the large number of abstract concepts that rules this course. Analogies are conceptualized by several authors, which converge on the idea that these are tools that seek a way to elucidate an unknown concept by comparing it to a familiar one, relating their similar and dissimilar features. An analysis on a survey of analogies found in high school chemistry textbooks and chemical equilibrium studies is performed in order to verify whether they are leading to misconceptions for their use by students and/or for their use by teachers in the classroom, or whether they promote a learning facilitation

O Entrelaçamento entre assistência social e trabalho informal: verdades e equívocos em tempos de crise do capital

The thesis presented here is of interest management to analyze the performance of the State, through the materialization of the professional courses, the process of integration of users CRAS-Pajuçara informal. Therefore, we assume that poverty and inequality reach a significant portion of the world population, in a context where the working class family is seen as an alternative to face the multiple expressions of social issues. Thus, before the changes of Productive Restructuring, marked by flexibility, outsourcing and casualization of labor relations in the world, the working class family must find ways to ensure their survival. In this direction, we discuss the advances, limitations and challenges posed to the Social Assistance Policy in contemporary, situating this context, the role of the state. Furthermore, we discussed the functionality of informality to the capitalist system, showing how capital appropriates of informal work, placing it in its logic, and thus makes the capital-labor ratio increasingly predatory, inhuman and unequal. The methodological procedures for the preparation of this study constitute a literature and documentary, beyond 10 semi-structured interviews directed to users of CRAS-Pajuçara, participants of training courses for the period 2010-2011. In light of the critical-dialectical rationality, and in a context where informal work has increasingly been co-opted as an alternative to huge unemployment in the same direction in which the welfare rises in tackling social inequality, the scope of this study, discusses and reveals the truths and misconceptions that surround this bourgeois discourse, in times of crisis of capital, the city of Natal, Brazil

Protozoários de vida livre em ambientes aquáticos do RN: ocorrência, caracterização e importância para a educação básica

Water is considered an essential right to life, besides being a determinant of economic development and social welfare, represented by both the quantity available, and the quality. In semi-arid Northeast, droughts occurring on a regular basis combined with human activities, aggravate the situation regarding the conservation of water resources in this area. To alleviate this condition is common to construction of artificial reservoirs, such as reservoirs and dams. As in natural aquatic environments, these reservoirs are potential sites for the proliferation, growth and development of diverse biological communities, whether of animals, plants and microorganisms. Research on the composition and ecology of these communities, especially microbial, are still restricted. One of the least studied groups in these environments are free-living protozoa, which over time have been neglected and after discoveries about its various functions in the aquatic ecosystem are beginning to receive more attention from scholars. They are, in quantitative terms, the most important consumers of microorganisms (mainly bacteria and algae) in aquatic environments, and therefore control the abundance of these. They may therefore influence the structure of the aquatic food chain in terms of species composition, abundance, biomass and biodiversity. Despite the recognition of the importance of protozoa in the final of the trophic transfer in aquatic environments, there are few data and, in general, are still precarious knowledge of them. Given the importance of protozoa in aquatic environments and the paucity of research on this group, especially in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, the present study aimed at identifying the genus and species of free-living protozoa that are present in the Armando Ribeiro Gonçalves Dam as well as to relate the occurrence and dynamics of the trophic conditions in the environment in which they are inserted, in order to support the hypothesis that species that are in these environments can serve to indicate the water quality. We observed the presence of 65 taxa of free-living protozoa, of which 29 were identified at the species level. There was a similarity space in taxonomic composition of protozoa, suggesting a possible regulation of this type of community for limnological variables other than those studied in this work (chlorophyll a, pH, temperature). Although it was aimed to analyze the conceptions of teachers and students from nearby towns Dam Armando Ribeiro Gonçalves, on issues relating to water quality and the role of protozoa. For this, we applied questionnaires with teachers and pupils of public schools of San Rafael and Itajá. It was concluded that teachers and students recognize the multi-dam Armando Ribeiro Gonçalves, although unaware of important aspects of the dynamics and ecology of this environment. Conceptions of teachers and students are matched at various times, especially with regard to waterborne diseases. In an attempt to identify possible misconceptions about the knowledge of the protozoa, assuming that these organisms have neglected their ecological role, and are seen as only, disease, a study was done with teachers and students, following a particular methodology that allowed look so clear and precise results. It was clear that knowledge about the free-living protozoa is still quite limited. The alternative conceptions that were found show a direct relation of protozoans and diseases. From the data obtained by these studies, we planned a series of science communication activities, environmental education and health education in schools close to study environments in order to promote a didactic transposition of accumulated knowledge about these organisms, favoring continuing education of teachers and the increase of information to the local community through the knowledge of biodiversity and ecology of these organisms. Moreover, the results found in this study and reflections on it that led to propose the elaboration of a book Readers with an emphasis on the group of freeliving protozoa in the populations for use in public schools in the region where it was developed the semiarid work

Doenças de Veiculação Hídrica em Trechos da Bacia do Rio Piranhas-Assu: ocorrência de bactérias oportunistas, caracterização epidemiológica e concepções de professores e agentes de saúde

Water is essential to life and all living organisms and their supply is necessary for economic development and quality of life of human populations, but their quality has been altered by human actions. In semi-arid northeast, the water is an issue of concern, especially its quality. This region is common to the construction of reservoirs that capture rain water, streams and temporary rivers in search of ease this situation, being intended for various purposes. Water scarcity is a limiting factor for the economic and social development of the region and contributes to the maintenance of waterborne diseases. About 80% of diseases that occur in developing countries are infected by waterborne pathogens. Therefore, this study aimed to determine in two environments that are part of semilênticos Armando Ribeiro Gonçalves reservoir, and a stretch of the river Assu, all located in the semiarid RN, the occurrence of opportunistic pathogenic bacteria; check the conceptions of teachers and health workers about the issues "waterborne diseases" and "bacteria" and a diagnosis of diarrheal diseases that affect the population in some municipalities of the semi-arid region of RN from a survey of epidemiological data. For identification of bacteria using commercial kits and the diagnosis of diarrheal disease was based on information from databases. The previous conceptions of teachers and health workers were obtained through questionnaires. The results confirmed the presence of opportunistic bacteria in the studied area, showing the importance of monitoring water quality. There was an under-reporting of cases of diarrhea pointing out flaws in the monitoring of Diarrheal Diseases and indicating the need to improve it. It was felt also the need to implement educational activities on topics dealt with both with teachers and health workers, since they were identified misconceptions on the subject