O pensamento crítico em ciências no Brasil: um olhar para os livros didáticos

Abstract

The Science area of education needs to provide for contemporaneous individuals with a background that prioritizes not only scientific knowledge, but also the development of competences that make them prepared to act in society. In this context, it is important to consider the promotion of Critical Thinking (CT) as potential approach for capabilities development as problem solving, decision-making, reflection and criticality. Considering this importance was performed documental analysis on 8 Didactic Books (DB) of the Elementary School 7th grade, identifying the purpose of the proposed activities, as well as their potential for the capacity development of CT. We realize, with the analysis, diversity of activities on Science DB, being that the most recurrent were classified on Exploratory category, which confer the opportunity for the person get involved in the process, depending on the pedagogical routing used by the teacher on his activities. We observed also, the presence of activities classified as Reflective/Criticism, whom play a crucial role in the person formation, instigating himself to think, reflect and criticize. It was also noted the presence of more traditional activities tory in the Explanatory category, because it only intends to bring additional information to the content. However, the results were considered satisfactory to the Science teaching, so we recognize that exploratory activities (most common), if well measured, has potential for the students build their own knowledge and their capabilities of CT, which also shows that the most updated DB of Science has been improved its quality in the last years. The results express that the most current LDs of Science, do not have predominantly simplistic and traditional activities, such as those listed in the Informational category, but which are advancing in relation to the nature of the proposed activities. Considering that some teachers still have their pedagogical practice basically permeated by LD, the improvements observed in the activities represent an advance for teaching and learning in Sciences.