Material instrucional para ensino de botânica: CD-ROM possibilitador da aprendizagem significativa no ensino médio

Abstract

This essay aims the elaboration, application and evaluation of an interactive CD-ROM, produced from the students‟ subsunçores, built with the resource of hypertext, and multimedia strategies. The objective of this research is the teaching of Botany.The guiding reference of this essay is the cognitive theory of David Ausubel, which basic concept is the significative learning, besides the subsunçores and concepts hierarchical learning, and the processes of progressive differentiation of of concepts and its integrative reconciliation. The subsunçores are information previously acquired, relevant and clear which function as base concepts to the new information. In order for the significative learning to occur, an association between the new knowledge and the subsunçores must exist, in a no arbitrary and substantive way (non-literal) (AUSUBEL et al., 1980). This relation in which the new ideas are related to relevant aspects of the student‟s cognitive structure will only happen should the learner show interest. To get to know this pre-disposition, a questionnaire was elaborated and applied to investigate the cognitive structure of the students, and the presence of subsunçores necessary in the learning process, and also to diagnose the pre-disposition shown by the students when it comes to Botanic and Environmental Education. The group of students from the high school senior year who participated was characterized by having learned Botanic mainly from the textbook, but which indicate preference for alternative methodologies with images and interactivity, with major predisposition towards subjects that have practical procedure in their everyday environment. Theses students, mostly, did know Botanic and the Vegetable Groups, however, they showed a general learning, lacking botanical concepts well defined, the differences and similarities between the Vegetable groups and daily examples. Related to local and global environmental problems, this group of students had a environmental view focused merely on environments that had not been altered by human action, which unbalancing effects present themselves far away from school living and actions judged harmful were highlighted by local society, as trouble regarding waste, deforestation and burning. From these subsunçores, the CD-ROM multimedia was elaborated, covering the multiple relations of the Vegetable Groups, such as ecosystems dynamic and current events of anthropic action on the flora. The potentiality of the educational CD-ROM was evaluated through the resolution of troublesome situations by the students in which their cognitive structure was analyzed in new situations. The material presented a set of educational moments with distinct approaches like an environmental poem that aimed portray the ecosystems relations, a botanic conceptual map which fomented the integrative reconciliation and the progressive differentiation of scientific concepts, a cladogram with phylogenetic evolution for the videos and vegetables classification that stimulated environmental impact situations due to man interference. The results of the CD-ROM application indicate that a learning increase happened on the botanic concepts with cryptogam, seeds and fruits, greater knowledge on the Vegetable Group present in the learner‟s everyday, the fostering of vegetables differentiation by the analysis of their similarities and differences and broader environmental awareness before anthropic actions that trigger diverse effects including man as agent and belonging to alterations.