Experimentos didático-científicos no contexto escolar: contribuições para o aprendizado de ciências sob a perspectiva discente

Abstract

Experimental activities have been the object of interest for a long time, mainly when it comes to their contributions for a better learning of the students, especially in Science teaching. It is important to note the importance of the investigative nature experimental activities as a motivating and interaction factor in the learning and teaching process. However, many are the challenges to overcome so that this strategy is in fact incorporated into the school context. Given this situation, this work constitutes a qualitative research and has as its mainly purpose to comprehend the importance of the experimental activities, according to the students own perspective, in this case, the 6th and 8th grades from Elementary School in the city of Uberlandia, Minas Gerais. Thus, we indicate interpretations, possibilities, difficulties and we try to identify potentialities for their effective inclusion into the school routine. We focus on the didactic/scientific experiments, we investigate if and how they are placed in the teachers planning, in what way they are performed, which are the obstacles and advantages experimented, how would the students like them to be developed and which are the benefits and important points. The data gathering occurred through systematic observations of theoretical and experimental classes, schools spaces for their development, through interviews with the teachers, conductor and the laboratorian, and, mostly, through questionnaires and interviews with the students. 150 students and 3 teachers, one conductor and two laboratorians, were involved. It was possible to notice that the school has its own structure for the performance of the experimental activities; it possesses its own laboratorian, the textbook as a subsidy for the teacher and the teachers and students realize the importance of experimental classes, despite their difficulties. We construct three major categories of student perspectives: contextualization, interaction and innovation. Aligned, these categories make us comprehend that including the experiment as a “novelty” to motivate and involve the students is not enough. The references to the teacher role in these classes are mainly related to the organization, explanation, incentive, diversification and the benefit of the student‟s action and reflection. The established categories indicate the possibility of developing the didactic/scientific experiments not only in the laboratory, but also in different spaces and time contexts and learning.