Experiências museais de professores de Ciências da Natureza: possibilidades para aproximar escolas e museus

Abstract

In this work, we consider the importance of the museum-school partnership and that this aspect is centered on the figure of the teacher who works in Basic Education schools. This consideration follows from the fact that they are the key parts for establishing an effective and efficient partnership between schools and museums. Thus, we investigate which experiences, conceptions, expectations, and motivations of teachers can favor an effective approximation between the school and the science museum. In this sense, we analyzed research available in the literature that addresses teachers who visit / visited science museums and we conducted semi-structured interviews with four teachers of Basic Education who are in the habit of visiting science museums with students. We try to focus on more personal aspects of these individuals in their relationship with museums. For data analysis, we used the theoretical-methodological framework of Discursive Textual Analysis. A priori categories were developed, related to the four concepts investigated: experiences, concepts, expectations, and motivations. From the speeches of the interviewed teachers, we found that the museum experiences with family or friends, and the direct interaction with museums or with people who work there, had a strong influence to bring them closer to these cultural spaces. They attribute to museum visits personal values, feelings of pleasure and personal and professional satisfaction. In the speeches of the teachers interviewed, despite conceiving science museums as spaces for fun and leisure, they do not see the visit as a walk in the park. Despite the pleasurable experiences of teachers interviewed with science museums, the concept of enjoyment is not fully understood by them when they visit these spaces with their students. Among the expectations of teachers that were evidenced in the literature, the playful and fun character provided by visits to the science museum is not forgotten by them. The teachers interviewed hope to find something new in the visit that satisfies their curiosities, interests, and provides manual interactivity. In relation to visitation, in addition to hoping that it can provide learning to their students and awaken in them a taste for Science, they yearn to obtain recognition and appreciation from the school community for their work. While the extrinsic motivations for visiting museums are aimed at improving science education, their intrinsic motivations concern the recognition and appreciation they receive from students and the satisfaction of their likes and curiosities in these spaces. From our analysis, we identified the emergence of a new category that promotes the approximation of the teacher to the science museum: affectivity. This category is closely related to the a priori categories and presents affective evidence of teachers' interactions with science museums. It contemplates your personal and professional experiences that contribute to the formation of your conceptions about science museums. It also justifies the search for the satisfaction of their expectations and the reasons that lead them to visit museums. Thus, we realize that the effective approach between teacher and museum goes beyond the conceptions, expectations and motivations of teachers simply related to the didactic-pedagogical context. In the first instance, this appropriation results significantly from the experiences, affective interactions, and personal appropriations that the teacher had with the science museum in his life.