O ensino de ciências nos anos iniciais: 20 anos de debates no encontro nacional de pesquisa em educação em ciências (ENPEC)

Abstract

This dissertation presents and analyzes characteristics of the academic production on Science Teaching in the initial grades of the elementary education, socialized at the Encontro Nacional de Pesquisa em Educação em Ciências (ENPEC), from 1997 to 2017. It was set up as a bibliographical research of the type "state of knowledge" (MACIEL, 2000; FERREIRA, 2002; ROMANOWSKI, ENS, 2006). It used as a theoretical subsidy contributions from the Philosophy of Science, especially those of Popper (1980;1987a), Kuhn, (1998;2006) and Bachelard (1971;1996) to understand the paths of science. It used still the contributions of interpreters from the Philosophy of Science to the field of Science Education. The corpus of the research consisted of 328 complete papers, subscribed in the modality of oral communications and published in the Annals of the 11 editions of the event. For data collection and analysis, it was used the content analysis methodology of Bardin (1977; 2008). The descriptors proposed by CEDOC/UNICAMP (MEGID, 1998) were used as pre-categories, to which were added others, of epistemological and educational nature, for an in-depth analysis of a sample composed of 19 texts. The study put in evidence a national growing production throughout all of the period, with emphasis on the eighth edition of the ENPEC, in 2011. It showed that studies carried out collectively by two and three authors also predominate. The Southeast and South regions showed themself to be the most productive, led by USP, UNESP, UNICAMP, UFSC, UTFPR and FURG, respectively. The researchers with the highest volume of work belong to the area of Physics Teaching, Psychology, Pedagogy, Biological Sciences and Chemistry. The content of the most representative school curriculum is Science, Environmental Education and Physics, whose predominant problems are related to the thematic focus Subject and method, Concept formation and Didactic resources. It was observed a preference of these studies by the second cyclic of the initial grades. As for the epistemological and educational assumptions guiding these studies, it was identified that the totality of the sample prioritizes a view of postempiric science and a critical approach of Science Teaching.