Energia, substância e vida: como os jogadores de videogame (gamers) entendem esses conceitos?

Abstract

Conceptual Profiles were thought of by Mortimer as a way to model the heterogeneity of thinking in Science classrooms and, over the decades, came to rely on a theoretical and methodological framework that allows thinking of the proposal as a theory of learning, the Theory of the Conceptual Profiles. The proposition of conceptual profiles, theoretical and methodological reflections and applications in the classroom configure the most usual paths of investigations in this research program, however, more recently, some works focus attention on ways of thinking and ways of speaking related to communities of practice, groups that share the same interests. Thus, we situate the present work in this perspective, presenting the general objective, to analyze the emergence of the zones of the conceptual profiles of Energy, Substance and Life in images and in videos of classic video games, which were presented to three gamers, with different relationships with the Natural Sciences, which work in different institutions, but which are part of the same community of practice. Based on a semi-structured interview with the participants, we sought to analyze the emergence of ways of thinking about such concepts, based on their ways of speaking, when placed in specific situations of the games, based on the situations presented, images and short excerpts from games, displayed on video. In the analyses, we seek to associate the ways of speaking with the ways of thinking that are characteristic of the zones of each of the conceptual profiles considered. We perceive the emergence of several areas of the highlighted conceptual profiles, associated with each of the presented contexts, in game situations, taking into account the pragmatic value of each way of thinking. Still, we consider the proposal as a possibility to broaden the understanding of fundamental concepts in Science, in situations outside the classroom, expanding the directions for the research program in conceptual profiles.