Flexquest no ensino de Ciências : incorporando a Teoria da Flexibilidade Cognitiva na WebQuest.

Abstract

This study presents a research done at a private school in the city of Recife (Brazil), with sophomore high school students. One of the objectives of this research is the study of Internet tools that help building students´ knowledge in beginner and advanced levels in an interdisciplinary context of science education. WebQuest (WQ) strategy was used for beginner levels of knowledge and FlexQuest (FXQ) for advanced levels. FlexQuest incorporates within the WebQuest the Cognitive Flexibility Theory (CFT). The CFT is a theory of teaching, learning and representation of knowledge that aims the proposition of strategies for the acquisition of advanced levels of knowledge. From a qualitative approach with the use of questionnaires, interviews and observations, pedagogical interventions were done with three groups of sophomore high school students, having the WQ and FXQ strategies as guidance. The results showed that the WebQuests, when conceived within a constructivist pedagogical proposal, are efficient strategies for beginner levels of knowledge due to the fact that the activities arise curiosity, research, cooperative work, autonomy even when it does not reach a deepest depth of the studied concepts. FlexQuest is a powerful strategy for the acquisition of advanced levels of knowledge as it develops in the students new skills in searching and processing the information. This strategy also showed a pedagogical practice based on reality opened up to multiple relations with the exterior in which the student build up his sense of learning, although the strategy itself requires a greater complexity in its elaboration, in relation to the WebQuest strategy.