Mudanças na noção de tempo relativístico em licenciandos de física, através de uma intervenção baseada na teoria dos construtos pessoais

Abstract

The objective of this dissertation is to analyze the changes in the notion of relativistic time, and the aspects relative to teaching of this notion at middle school, that future Physics teachers start to highlight, after experiencing an intervention based on Kelly's Personal Construct Theory. Since we deal with a complex subject, The Theory of Relativity, many times we cannot comprehend it during our formative process, what implies in future difficulties for our teaching practice. Through Kellyan Experience Cycle (KEC) and a workshop about The Theory of Relativity, future Physics teachers reflected about the repercussion of this experience on their conceptions about the notion of relativistic time, and talked about some aspects related to the teaching of this notion at middle school. The results indicate that, despite the changes that occurred at students' conceptions, not all of them could differentiate the notion of absolute time from that of relativistic time. We verified that, after the experience of the workshop about the kinematics of space-time, they realized that they could start to teach the notion of relativistic time to middle school students, without mentioning that they were dealing with the Theory of Relativity, to avoid psychological blockade. However, they presented difficulties to notice the aspects related to the teaching of that notion.