Crenças educacionais dos professores formadores de cursos de licenciatura em Ciências da Natureza e Matemática

Abstract

Educational beliefs are internal and individual elaborations about how teachers conceive of scientific knowledge and its process of teaching and learning. Teachers act according to their educational beliefs without have sufficient reflection of the influence of these beliefs on their practice. Against this, we assume that the educational beliefs of the epistemological and didactic-pedagogical nature of the professors can influence the formation of the students in understanding of what is science and its teaching and learning. Thus, this research had as objective to investigate the educational beliefs that support the performance of the professors of undergraduate courses in Natural Sciences (Chemistry, Physics and Biological Sciences) and in Mathematics offered by the Federal University of the Southern Frontier - UFFS). As methodological procedures, a case study was carried out. The research, of qualitative approach, used empirical data collected in three moments: (1) At first, we analyze institutional documents, especially the seven Pedagogical Projects of the courses investigated, aiming to analyze how the epistemological and didactic-pedagogical dimensions are addressed in these curriculum; (2) In a second moment, we applied a likert questionnaire with 40 questions, online, for all professors who worked on specific content curricular components. We obtained 27 questionnaires answered and analyzed; (3) In a third step, we invite all professors who teach curricular components to the disciplinary contents of the areas investigated to participate in an individual interview in order to obtain more information about their educational beliefs. We interviewed 16 professors. For the empirical data, we use the content analysis proposed by Bardin (2016). The results of the documentary analysis indicated that the epistemological dimension is almost absent in the curriculum analyzed. The didactic-pedagogical dimension is more present throughout the analyzed curriculum, which seems to point to an attempt to overcome the 3 + 1 model. The results of the questionnaires and the interviews suggest that the professors present a tendency to educational beliefs about the science of their teaching and learning of constructivist character, although traces of traditional beliefs are still present among these professors. Professional experience, coexistence with other professionals, student trajectory and teachers (Basic Education teachers and undergraduate professors) were the main models of teacher training for these professors. We emphasize that initial and continued training was not considered significant for the respondents. This instigation signals the importance of reflecting on the implications of the educational beliefs in the initial formation of professors who will act with the Scientific and Technological Education in Basic Education.