A interação do ciclo da experiência de Kelly com o círculo hermenêutico-dialético, para a construção de conceitos de biologia

Abstract

The students of high school present difficulties in the construction of these concepts. It is believed that such fact happens for two reasons: the first one is because those concepts involve some phenomena in molecular level that demands a great capacity of the students to abstract and second one is because the aspects differentiate one process from another are quite subtle. This research intends to investigate the use of the contemporary bioplastics theme, know as green plastics, as an element to give context to the degradation, biodegradation and decomposition concepts construction. The bioplastics are quite appropriate to that kind of intervention, because they can be easily handmade at school laboratories and there is also the possibility of studying degradation, biodegradation and decomposition processes in loco, once this material has a relatively short life time. The theoretical presuppositions of this work were the Theory of Personal Constructs and hermeneutic-dialectic methodology. The united use of these contributions allowed the methodology structuring, the data collection and the attendance of the students' cognitive processes during the learning processes. .The analysis of the initial results indicates that students had difficulties in use an appropriated terminology to explain the processes, as well to perceive the phenomenon that happens in an abstract scale. However, their conceptions were significantly altered and the degradation, biodegradation and decomposition final concepts were very close to the formal scientific definitions found in the area literature.