Microorganismos em nossa vida: uma abordagem problematizadora

Abstract

The concepts related to microorganisms and microbiology are difficult for students to understand in the classroom. This issue is compounded by the lack of contextualization between microbiology knowledge and students' daily lives, which led us to reflect on the strategies used in teaching this content. In an effort to address this difficulty, we found in Paulo Freire's dialogical-problematizing education a possible path to rethink the strategies used for teaching microorganisms and microbiology. Thus, we proposed the following research question: How can a Didactic Sequence, developed based on the principles of Paulo Freire’s problematizing education, contribute to the construction of concepts about microorganisms, such as bacteria and fungi, among second-year high school students in a public school in Ponta Porã, MS? For the development of this study, we followed an adaptation of Freirean Thematic Investigation, with the following stages: understanding the local reality, consulting school documents, applying questionnaires to gather students’ conceptions, encoding and decoding the collected information, thematic reduction, and developing the theme into a didactic sequence. The didactic sequence was structured according to Paulo Freire’s dialogical-problematizing education through Pedagogical Moments. This qualitative research was conducted with second-year high school students from a public school in Ponta Porã-MS. Data analysis was carried out using Content Analysis. The resulting generative themes were: Food Production, Consumption, and Preservation. The results highlighted the importance of the dialogical-problematizing approach in facilitating the appropriation of biological knowledge related to microorganisms through the theme of Food, enabling the connection between everyday knowledge and scientific knowledge. We concluded that the didactic sequence, designed based on dialogical-problematizing education on Food Production, Consumption, and Preservation, was potentially significant for learning about microorganisms. Students were able to understand the importance of these organisms to the planet and recognize that they can have beneficial relationships with humans and other living beings, thus overcoming the negative perception often associated with microorganisms.