Os materiais de baixo custo em práticas experimentais da educação básica: delineamentos da produção acadêmica no ensino de física

Abstract

Experimental practices began to be inserted in the Brazilian school context more than a century ago, with a strong relationship with international projects and practices carried out in universities. Its objective was to improve the learning of scientific knowledge, since it was considered, in the context of the theory-practice dichotomy, that students approach theoretical content, but there was a great obstacle related to how to use what was learned or identify how physics helps to understand everyday life. Despite the long journey, the experimental practices barely make up the current school day, in part, under the justification of the lack of economic resources for the acquisition of materials and the structuring of didactic laboratories. In this tendency, for some decades the academic literature has pointed to the alternative of using experimental practices with low-cost materials (LCM). Thus, with the aim of deepening the understanding of the subject of experimental practices with the alternative of using the LCM in the teaching of Sciences/Physics and guided by the discomfort generated by the discourse that the practical activities with the LCM are a valuable alternative for teaching and learning, while observing that they are effectively little used, we seek to find directions to the question: what do academic productions show us about the insertion of LCM in teaching and learning in Sciences/Physics? The research has, in accordance with the proposed problem, the objective of investigating the meanings produced (conceptualizations, characterizations, initiatives, difficulties, limits and contributions to teaching and learning) on practical activities characterized by their authors as low cost, expressed in the articles published in the proceedings of the XXII, XXIII and XXIV Simpósio Nacional de Ensino de Física (SNEF) and available online on their respective websites. The construction of the data led us to a corpus of 35 articles, which were read in full, then analyzed through Discursive Textual Analysis (DTA), in order to obtain new understandings about the problem and the objectives of the research. With the analysis of the corpus, exploring interpretations in the form of metatexts, nine final categories were constructed, namely: democratization of access to experimental practices; diversification of the school space for experimental practice; need for education financing; overcoming traditional classes; student motivation; risk in the construction of the student's vision of science; superficiality of the approach to the types of materials and limits of use; limitations of critical reflection on definitions; relevance of initial and continuing teacher training. In that way, the understandings identified elements that point to the importance of the presence of the LCM in the experimental practices and gaps to be overcome in the productions on the subject, suggesting directions for future research in order to enhance its insertion in the classroom, for now still. insufficient for the educational scenario in Sciences/Physics in our country.