O ensino de ciências nos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental: uma experiência com o software scratch

Abstract

The research titled “The Objectification and Subjectification Knowledge Process on Urban Sewage in the Early Years of Elementary School: An experience with the Scratch Software” presents a study on the viability of using information and communication technologies, that are considered as technological cultural artifacts for the teaching and learning of environmental themes, in particular, about urban sewer for students in the early years of elementary school at a Municipal school in Campo Grande-MS. This subject was chosen at a suggestion of the school ́s science teacher and it is part of an extracurricular theme on basic sanitation. In order to develop the research, it was taken into account the socio-cultural context of the students who live in a peripheral neighborhood that does not yet have a sewer network where the school is located, and also it was taken into account the few proposals that suggest the use of technologies for science education for the early years. The basic research question is: “Does the use of scratch software by students in primary education enhance the learning of scientific knowledge related to basic sanitation, in particular regarding urban sewer systems? This study was based on the theoretical and methodological assumptions of the Objectification Theory (OT), a learning theory based on sociocultural theory and the ideas of dialectical materialism. It establishes the activity as a methodological unit of analysis, that is interpreted as a joint work of the learning communities (teacher and students), as they represent a unit that represents society as a whole. The OT proposed by Luis Radford seeks to break with individualist conceptions of education and it is within this line of though that the author resignifies the concepts of knowing, knowledge and learning when considering that wisdom is something that can be found in culture and that has the potential to materialize in knowledge. And learning is a process that involves not only the updating of knowledge (objectification process) but also the updating of the person (subjectification process), in the sense of its transformation because, for this author, the school does not produce only knowledge, but it also produces ethical, thoughtful human beings who show their opinion during and after the activity. Based on the OT idea, we analyzed the joint work of ten fourth-grade students who worked in small groups and used digital artifacts, especially the Scratch software, to solve the task, which consisted of five actions on the topic of urban sewer systems, developed in four meetings of approximately three hours each. The results showed changes in the behavior of these students as a result of joint work and the use of digital artifacts. And the semiotic manifestations observed in the joint work, during the presentations carried out with the aid of cultural artifacts suggest that these students are in the process of updating their knowledge about sewer systems and its consequences, but, due to difficulties in reading and interpreting, other actions with increasing degree of difficulty are suggested, so that this knowledge can be part of the conscience of these students and that they will come to mobilize them in different contexts.