Reading about nuclear magnetic resonance in high school physics classes

Author(s)

André Coelho da Silva

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Faculdade de Educação
• Defense date: 2013-07-31

Examining board members

Maria José Pereira Monteiro de Almeida; Pedro da Cunha Pinto Neto; Rejane Aurora Mion

• Advisor: Maria José Pereira Monteiro de Almeida

Abstract

Seeking alternatives of how to present cultural elements of physics related to aspects of the material world, of how to approach physics education of issues that may increase the participation of students in the classroom and of how to present elements of physics through educational strategies alternatives to that guided almost exclusively by the use of the mathematical formalism, I had as goal to understand the working of a scientific divulgence reading about magnetic resonance in High School. Associated with this goal, my study question was: how High School students produce meanings from a scientific divulgence reading about what is the magnetic resonance and how it is applied? To answer this question, I worked a scientific divulgence text about magnetic resonance with three classes of the second year of High School at a public school of which I was a physics teacher. The information was collected from the students through two questionnaires - one applied during the reading of the text and another after my mediation as the teacher - and four interviews. To analyze them I took as support notions presented by Eni Orlandi, who is affiliated to Discourse Analysis in your part originated by Michel Pêcheux. Analysis indicated: that the reading of scientific divulgence texts and the use of questionnaires formulated with open questions may favor the emergence of discussions that are not restricted to the formal content of physics and to the issues discussed in the text; that although the topic interested the students, they had many difficulties in reading, having certain refusal to perform it and write about the subject read - especially due to the extent and conceptual density of the text; that there was predominance of empirical repetitions (mnemonic copies of excerpts of the text) or brief and/or superficial formal repetitions (the "say with your words") in the answers to the first questionnaire; that there was predominance of formal repetitions with higher levels of depth and basement in the answers to the second questionnaire, being recurrent the materialization of excerpts of the mediation; and that the students, in general, chose to highlight how apprehended knowledge from the teaching sequence elements that relate to applications and practical utilities. In this sense, the analysis seem to indicate the importance of the teacher mediation, the urgency to work the reading about science in school and the value assigned by the youth to the study of topics whose usefulness is made explicit. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 12/03451-0 - READING ON NUCLEAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE IN PHYSICS CLASSES OF HIGH SCHOOL
• Grantee: André Coelho da Silva
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master