Professores de ciências naturais: necessidades formativas para ensinar a medir em trabalhos práticos e experimentais

This paper presents a research realized with Physics, Chemistry and Biology teachers, and it aimed to evaluate: 1) the development level of those teachers regarding the abilities that make possible to teach high school students about how to measure in practical and experimental work; 2) the formatives necessities regarding those abilities; and 3) the order of priority for teacher´s formation regarding those abilities. The study is based on the activity theory, from A. N. Leontiev (1983), since we considerer the teacher´s formation a kind of activity for which the category necessity is source of motivation and in which is a necessary condition for professionality and for the professional development. A questionnaire with open and closed questions was applied to 116 teachers during three pedagogic workshops realized to dynamize the science laboratory. The instrument allowed us to obtain the personal and professional profile of the participants, as well as their development level, their formative necessities and their order of priority about the teaching of the abilities related to the work of testing measuring hypothesis, regarding: a) to operationalize variables of a hypothesis in experimental work; b) to measure in practical and experimental work; c) to estimate possible measuring mistakes and use proper procedures to minimize them; d) to estimate the validity of a measuring; and e) to estimate the confiability of a measuring. The research results indicated some limitations of the teachers about their development level in all the analyzed abilities. More than 90% of the teachers considered those deficiencies as necessities of the continuing formation. Most of them (about 54%) expressed immediate priority for formation in each one of the abilities. From a correlation, using the statistic chi-square test, between the development level and the formative necessities for the five abilities, the obtained results allow us to assure that, for all those teaching abilities, there is a strong correlation between the development level and the formative necessity. This situation is symptomatic of the importance of approaching more the science teaching and the teacher´s formation on practical and experimental work in high school as key-component of scientific education in basic education. The obtained results can contribute, as subsidy, for continuing formation courses, having as base the necessities that constitute motivation elements of the teachers for professional development

Formação da habilidade de interpretar gráficos cartesianos em licenciandos em química segundo a teoria de P. Ya. Galperin

It has been remarkable among the Science Teaching debates the necessity that students do not learn only theories, laws and concepts, but also develop skills which allows them to act towards a critical citizenship. Therefore, some of the skills for the natural sciences learning must be taught consciously, intentionally and in a planned way, as component of a basic competence. Studies of the last twenty years have shown that students and teachers have plenty of difficulties about skills development and, among several, the skill of interpreting Cartesian graphics, essential for the comprehension of Natural Science. In that sense, the development of that type of professional knowledge during the initial education of future Chemistry teachers has become strategic, not only because they need to know how to use it, but also because they need to know how to teach it. This research has as its general objective the organization, development and study of a process of formation of the skill of interpreting Cartesian graphics as part of the teachers professional knowledge. It has been accomplished through a formative experience with six undergraduate students of the Teaching Degree Course of Chemistry of Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte), in Brazil. In order to develop that skill, we have used as reference P. Ya. Galperin s Theory of the Stepwise Formation of Mental Actions and Concepts and its following qualitative indicators: action form, degree of generalization, degree of consciousness, degree of independence and degree of solidness. The research, in a qualitative approach, has prioritized as instruments of data collecting the registering of the activities of the undergraduate students, the observation, the questionnaire and the diagnosis tests. At the first moment, a teaching framework has been planned for the development of the skill of interpreting Cartesian graphics based on the presupposed conceptions and steps of Galperin s Theory. At the second moment, the referred framework has been applied and the process of the skill formation has been studied. The results have shown the possibility of develop the skill conscious about the invariant operation system, with a high degree of generalization and internalized the operational invariant in the mental plane. The students have attested the contributions at that type of formative experience. The research reveals the importance of going deeper about the teaching comprehension of the individualities tied to the process of internalization, according to Galperin s Theory, when the update of abilities as part of the teaching professional knowledge is the issue

Quadrinhos nas aulas de ciências: narrando uma história de formação continuada

Located at the intersection of Science Education, Teacher Training and use of didactic Comics (HQ), the text aims to discuss the problem which thus sets: - What is the contribution of the incorporation of comics in the continuing education of teachers Natural Sciences of the early years of elementary school? - May be the comics for enabling science teaching? - How to contribute to a reflexive training of teachers of the early years? - In order to answer these questions, there was a collaborative action research in a school located in the city of Natal / RN, with three teachers who teach natural science in the early years of elementary school. The study involved the conduct of 13 meetings of in-service, under the focus on reflective practice, with the purpose of discussing topics underlying the teaching of science and the use of comics as a methodological strategy. All meetings were recorded on audio and transcripts. The teachers finally recorded the meetings by writing a portfolio. The teachers made use of 10 sessions with reading comics in science classes, which were video recorded and later watched by the educators in autoscopy sessions followed by individual interviews. From the collected data, several aspects that have emerged can be grouped into three categories: The difficult concept of science, teachers' work and the obstacles and possibilities of comics as a teaching strategy. In this sense, are woven assessments taking as its founding, look for the reflective and dialogic practices exercised in the classroom. In the analysis of the data, we can see the conceptual difficulties, methodological and pistemological questions of teachers for teaching science, but also the limitations of comic books for teaching. Learning more relevant appointed by the teachers is related to the importance of collective work to mitigate the training needs of teaching. Finally, signals that the HQ has a great potential for use in science classes, provided that the teacher conduct a careful planning for this, but that the meetings of continuing education promote moments of reflection on teaching practices that are capable of giving rise to new attitudes before the difficulties they depict

Educação científica no contexto pós-ontológico: por uma concepção plural de conhecimento e educação

The development of this work arises from the research of sociological and philosophical characters contemplating also other approaches which aims to answer the followingquestions: what is the responsibility of science teaching for the image one has about science? ; which scientific education should be designed for nowadays? . After considering the assumptions brought along by rationalism and the criticisms to the illuminist model proposed by sociology and philosophy of science, as well by the biology of the knowing process, going through discussions concerning post-modernity issues, one is given to understand that the image of science has become the central point of discussion in the last hundred years, including what concerns the area of science teaching, and that practically none of those discussions really reached natural science classes indeed. We adopt the term postontological to characterize the recent proposals on philosophy and sociology, because we evaluate that this term allows a better identification of the scientific realism crisis, which supports the existence of an ontological domain which science, and only science, is able to understand. One notices that the general public is not aware of those discussions, mainly if they are science teachers and students. So we believe that discussing the logic in which science is structured, the new understandings concerning the scientific undertaking, especially those of an externalist character, and the relationship between science and society, all of this contributes to build up a science teaching which contemplates a reflective contribution, besides allowing the inclusion of the study of other epistemologies in the educational practice. We argue that a revisionist posture seems to be the most appropriate for the contemporary scientific education, contemplating, besides the teaching of the usual science contents, discussions on the issues involving that knowledge, as well as respecting epistemologies alternative to the modern Western scientific one, in order one can work on the perception of local knowledge generated from other epistemological bases. We describe here practical activities we did involving teachers (short-term courses) and high-school students in an inland school in the Rio Grande do Norte state, in Brazil, as a way to demonstrate the possibility of interventions which can take those conceptions, discussions and changes to the classroom

A formação pós-graduada em ensino de ciências naturais e matemática de docentes do IFRN: implicações na atuação docente

This research part of the educational context of the Federal Rio Grande do Norte, through the resumption of legal frameworks that characterize it as an institution belonging to the Federal Network of Professional Education and Technology Brazilian, with a focus on continued education policies for the servers who work there specifically teachers, especially those who have their work in the Teaching of Natural Science and Mathematics. To do this the cut in an agreement between the IFRN and UFRN PPGECNM through the professional master's degree Teaching of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. This agreement as we have research collaborators 08 master teachers who graduated in the period 2004 to 2010, so we undertook a qualitative and quantitative research aimed to conduct the study in general terms of description and analysis of the impacts caused by the formation of masters IFRN in PPGECNM UFRN, taking into account the production of the same academic (dissertation), his performance in the context of the institution and the historical, social, economic and political aspects involved, and also meet the guidelines of the project at the Observatory in 2008 - MEC / CAPES / BSD-P. We used the theoretical options methodological elements of Comprehensive Interview and multireferentiality, our data collection instrument was the main interview, we also performed the analysis of dissertations by lecturers and teachers featured, from the specific descriptors used in catalogs USP / IFUSP (1992, 1996) and UNICAMP / FE / CEDOC (1998) and by other researchers. In analyzing and understanding the speech of the interviewees were able to identify the implications of teacher education in the school context, the motivation to seek the Master; how was the construction of the object of study of the educational product and its use in teaching practice and intervention, the question of the role of master teachers in the school environment to the post master taking into account changes in professional performance and influence in the working groups, how does the use of research and investigation in the classroom after training and between training and educational quality in the context of IFRN. In reading and analysis of the dissertations were able to identify the main focus and under-explored thematic focus as well as the theoretical methodological references. At the end of the research developed a product that could be used for technical analysis studies and assessment in quantitative terms the results achieved by the master teachers IFRN through his training in PPGECNM UFRN

Caracterização da área de Ensino de Biologia e Ciências no mestrado profissional da UFRN a partir das dissertações

The deployment of master professionals in Mathematics and Science Teaching by CAPES provided an interesting perspective, involving institutional incentive to upgrade teacher training in this modality. In this sense, the objective was to map the profile of the candidates in the Graduate School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics UFRN (PPGECNM), develop a database with specific descriptors for dissertations and research the group creation biology research and dissertations produced by graduate students in the Master course. This thesis has three threads, where the first is entitled: "The teaching of science as part of research: emergency, improvement and current reflections", giving a brief description of the creation of graduate studies and the emergence of Brazil in Science education. The second topic: "Professional Masters in Teaching of Natural Sciences and Mathematics-UFRN: candidate profile the biological ', shows the general characteristics of PPGECNM-UFRN and who are the candidates seeking the biological area of the Graduate Program. The third topic. "The construction and consolidation of the research group in biology education in PPGECNM-UFRN", a survey was made of data on the creation of the research group in biology education from the analysis of academic productions of teachers and masters graduates this Masters course, for those involved, some additional interviews about the experience in training in biology education. Data used in these investigations related to these students correspond to the technical product to be used in other studies profile teachers /dissertations from the PPGECNM / UFRN. Research shows that: the existence of a larger number of postgraduate courses in the field of Science Education provides greater productivity in academic research on the subject, the emergence of a research group on education in biology, tied to a post degree in education, is an attraction to strengthen lines of research in science education by teachers researchers in other disciplines, the candidates seeking permanent area for research in biology education signals the importance of this investment because if shows the need to search for the continuing education of practicing teachers, demands with interests in investigations from real problems from school