Teaching chemistry in Brazil - 1945/1971

• Grant number: 11/10424-7
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: September 01, 2011
• End date: August 31, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Education
• Principal Investigator: Reginaldo Alberto Meloni
• Grantee: Reginaldo Alberto Meloni
• Host Institution: Instituto de Ciências Ambientais, Químicas e Farmacêuticas (ICAQF). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Diadema. Diadema , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: André Amaral Gonçalves Bianco ; Luciana Aparecida Farias

Abstract

In the turn of the 19th/20th Centuries, the "Gymnasios"/High School/ of São Paulo State had a large apparatus for the teaching of sciences, such as, proper spaces for practices (laboratories for Chemistry, cabinets for Physics and Museums of Natural History), technical staff (professors and lab technicians), several materials (scientific instruments, reagents, laboratory glassware, collections of minerals, animals and plants) etc. Although, some authors consider that in the first decades of 20th Century there was not an effective teaching of sciences in Brazil. That could only happen effectively after the end of the World War II. This paper has the goal of verify the development of teaching sciences, especially Chemistry, at high school level in Brazil during the 20th Century. There are specific papers about the history of teaching Chemistry at College level, but the history of education in Brazil still has a deficit of a systematic study over the development of teaching sciences at elementary level. The hypothesis to be tested is that the appropriation of knowledge occurs in a specific way according to the place and the time, and, therefore, on one hand, there were an effective Chemistry teaching procedures at high school level since the end of the 19th Century; and, on the other hand, the valuation of the education of sciences stimulated by the competition between the Great Powers during the cold war. This did not reflect in Brazil to a point of modify the education substantially. (AU)