Educação científica e educação tecnológica: a identificação de relações a partir de atividades pedagógicas com robótica educativa

Abstract

The recent advent of free platforms which allow the creation of educational robotics projects, has brought new possibilities for education, even if doubts remain about methodologies and the learning achieved in pedagogical processes mediated by new digital technologies. Anyway, educational robotics projects are already part of the curriculum in many private schools, and begin to be present in public schools as well. If doubts remain about the relationship between content and technology, it is possible that technological education will be approached in a fragmented way and oriented to a pragmatism that would assume as valid only the applicable scientific knowledge. If this occurs, it is also possible for graduates of higher education courses to remain limited to the use and to the implementation of technologies rather than being oriented to protagonism attitudes face the need for innovation. Thus, this research turned to a verification about the stage of knowledge of teachers in basic education level regarding to the relationship between scientific knowledge and technological knowledge. It is important the understanding that there is a relationship between science and technology, and consequently between school science content and current technologies, which goes against statements that content studied at the school are unrelated to the technological world in which children and adolescents are immersed. The research also investigated what is present in the various types of educational robotics dissemination material, including open access documents, technical manuals, scientific articles, academic dissertations and theses, official Brazilian educational documents, as well as the documentation of the Brazilian Olympiad of Robotics, because these materials will be taken as basis by teachers interested in using educational robotics in their pedagogical approaches. In addition, training activities were conducted with teachers of basic education regarding the pedagogical perspectives of educational robotics, with answers to a thirty statements questionnaire about the subject. It is possible to conclude that teachers not only recognize the relationship between their areas of knowledge and the creation of technologies but also recognize that the contents addressed by them contribute to the formation of individuals with the capacity to create new technological products. However, activities related to this research also showed that they know superficially or are not aware of such advances and consequently the ways of transposing the resulting complexities to curricular contents. Those teachers, who demonstrate maturity in relation to democratic perspectives of technological constructions, also present substantivist understandings about technology recognizing it as neutral and as an application of science. The materials that constituted the documental corpus of the research were methodologically studied under the light of Discursive Textual Analysis, from which emerged categories indicating that current activities with educational robotics do not harmonize the complexities involved, while at the same time show pragmatists preferences. In order to reach these conclusions, current technologies and scientific advances were taken into account as well as studies in the field of Philosophy of Technology, having also epistemological support in the rationality and conception of science of Gaston Bachelard.