Um perfil conceitual para o conceito de substância

Abstract

Looking that the concept of substance is polysemic, assuming a several meanings in divers contexts, this dissertation had the goal to propose a conceptual profile (MORTIMER, 1995) for this concept. The profile was proposed from dates collected in divers sources like: texts of History of Chemistry, papers in the literature in Science Education, questionnaires applied to pupils of high school and graduate degrees and interviews semi-structured. These sources allowed a collected of dates representatives of three genetics domains (WERTSCH, 1985): ontogenectis, sociocultural and microgenetics. The dates of the bibliographic research provided us the first categories in which became zones when we joined with the dates of empirical research (answers from questionnaires and interviews). We analyzed the questionnaires individually and we have arrived to individuals zones for each student, based on the categories yet appeared on the bibliographic research and the epistemologics/ontologics commitments. Thus, the students’ conceptions that formed the proposed zones presented pragmatic value (JAMES, 1974) to the profile. At last, we proposed the followed zones to the conceptual profile of substance: generalist, essentialist, substancialist, rationalist and relational.