Educação para o trânsito no ensino de ciências : proposta de uma unidade de ensino potencialmente significativa

Abstract

The societies, generally, have in education one of its pillars. The school is a privileged space for learning and socialization, either on his ability to articulate theory and practice, as well on the multiplicity of experiences it provides. New educational paradigms have brought to discussion important questions about the role of education and more efficient ways to conduct the process of teaching and learning. Education structured in a set of clearly differentiated disciplines and focused on mechanical learning are realities present at school environment. In this sense, Science education is characterized by the presentation of concepts, laws and formulas in a disjointed and detached way of the students reality. Learning can become meaningful as it approaches specific situations of the student daily life in order to enable the assignment of meaning to such knowledge. The inclusion of transversal themes in education is an approximation of the curriculum content with emergent social and cultural issues. Traffic education can be used as a resource for the teaching of science as it furthers our understanding of different physical concepts in context with daily situations of the student’s life. This paper presents the development and research results on the use of a Potentially Meaningful Teaching Unit (PMTU) structured on Traffic Education theme in Science classes of elementary school. The research sought to answer the central questions of the investigation: is it possible to develop meaningful learning of Kinematics in the context of Traffic Education? A PMTU is a viable alternative for this purpose? The research is qualitative, descriptive, experimental, and participant aimed to verify the potential of a new teaching, learning and assessment strategy for the occurrence of meaningful learning. Data analysis used as tools written productions of students, concept maps, diagnostic and summative assessment, the teaching practice daybook. The PMTU has been applied in a class of 9th grade of elementary school in a public school in Bom Princípio / RS. The results showed evidences of the occurrence of meaningful learning on conceptual, procedural and attitudinal contents. The different evaluation tools used showed that the cognitive structure of the students evolved in the different dimensions of learning. The elaboration of the conceptual maps showed advances in the progressive differentiation and the creation of problem situations by students brought evidence of integrative reconciliation. The study also showed that this teaching strategy produced substantial dialogue interactions in the classroom as well as reflection on attitudes and values on traffic, in a humanistic perspective. These results suggest that PMTU has potential to contribute to new forms of teaching and learning science.