Alfabetização científica no ensino médio: concepções como indicadores de práticas docentes em Biologia.

Abstract

The Scientific Literacy (SL) presupposes the development of a critical rationality and the starting point for its introduction in schools is the teaching action, from this perspective, we aim, with the present study to investigate the conception of Biology teachers about the objectives of this curricular component , as well as, the definitions, reports of practices, influences and limiting factors of SL in the school space. We seek to understand the elements that make up this phenomenon within the teaching of Biology, in the final stage of basic education. For that, we use the qualitative approach and the assumptions of the phenomenological method, using theoretical saturation for the sample measure. Semi - structured interviews were carried out with eight Biology professors from state public schools in the city of João Pessoa, PB. The results indicated that the objectives of Biology teaching, as pointed out by teachers, are directly related to the aspects investigated about SL. Some themes emerged in more than one of the categories investigated: application and the contextualization with daily life; understanding about the scientific method and the science; approximation between science and students. Other themes have emerged in only one category: understanding of the functioning of nature and technical knowledge to pass the entrance exam, within the category on the objectives of teaching biology; understanding of scientific language, in the category about the concept of SL; to stimulate the students to make science, and to use activities of problematization and investigation, in the descriptive category of the SL practices; improvement of learning, in the category on the contexts that influence the practice of SL; and social transformation that emerged in the category on the importance of SL to the training of the students. The limiting factors identified take into account the teachers, the students and the school, involving lack of commitment, formative and structural deficiencies. We conclude that, even though the approach of the political dimension in the speeches on the importance of the SL, the lack of theoretical deepening in the conceptualization of the theme may be restricting the perspectives of action of the teachers. His conceptions indicate outdated practices, embedded in an empiricist, linear, and cumulative view of science, a factor that may be directly related to initial formation. Whith these results, it is possible to perceive that the teacher's conception about SL, and their reports of practices, demonstrate some weaknesses and are relatively distant from what the SL presupposes, regarding a properly critical and emancipatory formation, in keeping with the contemporary demand of social performance of students.