Concepções alternativas de estudantes do EJA: transformação química versus transformação física

Abstract

Alternative conceptions are ideas that students present about certain phenomena that do not coincide with scientific knowledge. One of the causes of alternative conceptions arising or remaining comes from the use of teaching models that do not confront or do not take into account students' previous conceptions. Such teaching perspectives can be seen in this paper, where we chose to describe the teaching models classified by Cachapuz, Praia and Jorge (2002), because we understand that the arrangement of their models is more complete. The teaching models that precede our teaching by conceptual change are: traditional teaching and discovery teaching. In the traditional model the teacher transmits the contents and the students receive passively, memorably and mechanically. In the discovery model teachers look for practical strategies for students to discover scientific concepts on their own. Our research is based on the conceptual change model, in which we develop strategies to identify and analyze students' alternative conceptions (CA) of chemical versus physical transformations. The target of the research was the students of a state school in Recife, from the Young and Adults Teaching course (EJA). We made use of the experimental activity with simple and easily accessible materials, facilitating students' learning. In the theoretical-practical class, the concepts of chemical versus physical transformations were worked on. Students had the opportunity to reconstruct their conceptions of chemical transformation and physical transformation in accordance with scientific concepts. In the obtained results one can notice advances after comparing the old conceptions of the students and their new ones acquired after the experience of experimental activity and dialogued classes.