O ensino por investigação e as perguntas investigáveis de ciências elaboradas por professores do ensino fundamental I em processo de formação continuada

Abstract

Inquiry teaching enables the development of activities that lead to the construction of concepts in science classes. Part of the set of strategies for developing these approaches is the proposition of problems, which, in this work, anchored in theoretical assumptions, we use the term "Inquiry Questions." Given this general context, the present study had as a research question: How do teachers who work with the curriculum component of Sciences in primary school formulate Inquiry Questions while planning investigative activities in a collaborative group format? The study's main objective was to analyze the process of Inquiry Questions construction when teachers developed didactic plans for school science classes during the activities of continuing education courses in a collaborative group format. The stages of the investigation constituted during a 60-hour continuing education course for teachers, which, as a cutout of the study, were organized into four episodes with descriptions of the interactions between trainers/researchers/participants, as follows: Episode 1: The Inquiry Teaching, Problematization, and Inquiry Questions; Episode 2: the definition of life and origin of life; Episode 3: the construction of investigative activities about the content of Living Things; and Episode 4: presentation of the investigative activities. Electronic audio and video devices were used to record the discursive interactions among the teachers gathered in groups for data constitution. The descriptions of the interactions were analyzed and interpreted from the assumptions of Ferrés - Gurt, Marba, and Sanmartí (2015), Ferrés - Gurt (2017), and Mikhail Bakhtin (1997). The results point out that continuing education courses through collaboration and research effectively contribute to the professional and personal development of the participants. During the training, the teachers assimilated processes of transposing definitions and contents of Science into investigative activities through Inquiry Questions, understanding the importance of problematization for the science classes and how to use the language of Science in Primary Education. Moreover, there were changes in the conceptual field of the content of "Living Things," in which teachers presented strong discursive marks about the divine conception of life in their initial verbal interactions. It was also possible to notice the overcoming of some simplistic views about Science, which was present in the multiple voices in the teachers' discourse, and their understanding of the need to update and know about the study's object. Finally, the Inquiry Questions improvement developed during the activities' planning, evolving from level 0 to level 2. This study points out some possibilities for the continuing education of teachers, from the teachers' professional and personal development, which implies improving learning in Science via inquiry teaching and inquiry questions.