Análise de zonas do perfil conceitual de substância que emergem na fala de uma professora de química da rede privada do Recife

Abstract

In this work, we set out to investigate how high school chemistry teacher perceive and mobilize different ways of thinking the concept of substance. We believe if teachers become aware of these different ways of thinking and talking about the concept of substance, based on the zones the conceptual profile of substance, they can improve both the process of construction of meaning carried out by students in science classroom and also improve their own epistemology of teaching practice. For discussion and analysis of research data, we consider the theory of conceptual profile as a model for analysis of the discursive dynamics in classroom (SILVA, 2011; SABINO, 2015; SILVA; AMARAL, 2013, MORTIMER, 1995; MORTIMER; EL-HANI, 2014). We involved a high school chemistry teacher from a private school in Recife as subject in this research.The methodological approach to operationalize the study was divided into three stages: semistructured interviews to collect information about the professional and epistemological profile of the participating teacher, her impressions on the concept of substance and possible relations to the concept of molecule; semistructured interview to identify and map zones of the conceptual profiles for substance and molecule through contextual situations; observation of four classes in order to distinguish ways of thinking about the concept of substance applied in classroom, as well as aspects of discursive interactions. All of that steps were recorded in audio and video and transcribed afterwards. The results showed the teacher faced many difficulties throughout her teaching practice, which may have led to limitations to deepen specific knowledge about Chemistry. They also illustrated teacher’s impressions about the concept of substance corresponded to generalist, essentialist, substantialist and rationalist zones for substance concept, more expressively both generalist and rationalist zones, which was confirmed in the first, second and third steps of the research, in which intuitive ideas, common sense and school scientific ideas were prevalent. The results also showed the ideas representing zones for the concept of substance are related to the conceptual profile of molecule in terms of microscopic view of the concept, thus we could see generalist, rationalist e relational zones of the conceptual profile of molecule. The findings also demonstrated the emergence of zones for the concept of substance in classroom is closely related to aspects of discursive interactions. We did not notice the emergence of relational zone in any step of this research, which confirms the difficulties regarding to limitations in teacher’s education with regard to her domain of specific knowledge. Therefore, the results achieved showed it would be important in basic education that teachers were aware of conceptual profiles and their zones so their ways of thinking and speaking a given concept don’t remain based on intuitive ideas connected to common sense and restricted to specific school contexts, associated with content presented in a minor way in textbooks. This could be understood as an epistemological teacher education.