Estudo da influência dos conhecimentos prévios na aprendizagem de eletricidade em grupos operativos num ambiente de laboratório

Abstract

This dissertation aims to investigate to what extent the students' prior knowledge of electricity provide (or not provide) learning in an environment of collective work (lab). The research began with a questionnaire to students of Mechanical Engineering, Laboratory of Electrical and Electronics discipline, this questionnaire we sought to contemplate the students' prior knowledge about electricity. Since this is a lab environment, all practical activities are carried out in groups. Thus were considered some specific state relations evidenced in the working groups, which were divided into eight parts theoretical frameworks : First an explanation of the work environment was performed according characterized the particular work environment, the laboratory. For third were listed some important concepts for this dissertation, the fourth moment is evidenced theories of learning by association and restructuring that are involved in this research , in parts five six are related to the cognitive process , such as theoretical theory meaningful learning theory of David Ausubel and of proximal development Vygotsky's zone. In the eighth part is highlighted the skills and competencies needed in the laboratory and in the eighth and final part is highlighted related to the work group process which has highlighted the concepts of Gestalt and field of Kurt Lewin and the theory of groups operating Pichon - Rivière. To search for the empirical research data, a questionnaire that sought formal prior learning, which were later called short form of "prior knowledge" was applied. Along with the information gathered from the questionnaire and observations of teacher discipline the chapter called the corpus construction which was specified as the formation and organization of groups with respect to prior knowledge occurred was written. The discursive textual analysis gave support to the next chapter called empirical analysis of the related corpus yielding three a priori categories: group formation, affinity group members and collaboration among group members , with the first category was subdivided into two: formation of homogeneous groups and formation of heterogeneous groups . In the conclusion it was observed that in all homogeneous groups with respect to prior knowledge, regardless of having been formed by marriage or not, there was collaboration between all members of the group. Already in heterogeneous groups, collaboration was both formed affinity groups as randomly formed us. However, the fact that it is a heterogeneous group does not guarantee that students are necessarily committed to the process of learning and not with the group, which brings here a question for future research. Also we list the issue of the importance of group formation as well as the teachers to know previously acquired formal knowledge of their students.