A radioatividade ambiental na formação inicial de professores de química na perspectiva da aprendizagem significativa

Abstract

According to the literature Radioactivity Teaching shows that future teachers need to experience alternative proposals to the traditional model has as limiting factor their restriction to the activities of calculations and discussions about nuclear activities, without involving experimental practices due to the degree of dangerousness of the material. Thus, we present in this dissertation a training plan to be inserted in the training courses for Chemistry teachers, extensive to the Natural Sciences, and, in the future, in the scope of basic education called Environmental Radioactivity. It is a perspective that values the constant interaction of man with the natural and artificially synthesized radionuclides present in the environment (air, water, soil, food and organism) as a way that re-measures the Teaching of Radioactivity, in an attempt to demystify the fear and the constant negative images produced on Radioactivity, while also contemplating the socio-environmental problems. The objective of this work was to evaluate the influence of the introduction of the Environmental Radioactivity content in the initial training of Chemistry graduates in their conceptions about Radioactivity and possible developments in the pedagogical practice of those involved in the training. The present work is the result of an intervention on Environmental Radioactivity carried out with a group of graduates in Chemistry of the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco (UFRPE) during the discipline of Pedagogical Practice in the Teaching of Chemistry I. Participants were grouped according to their frequency on training days, and we analyzed the production of three subjects who participated in the entire training process and performed all the activities. From them we obtained as conceptual material pre and post-training conceptual maps and obliteration time (time of forgetting), as well as lesson plans on Radioactivity. From the results, we observed that the training proposal was well accepted by the licenciandos, however, when analyzing all the conceptual maps we detected that the information about the natural radionuclides did little interact with their preexisting conceptions that retained some basic structure about Radioactivity. We note that the training enabled the subjects to broaden their conceptions about Radioactivity by leading them to overcome some misunderstandings and to recognize the presence of the natural radionuclides. From the analyzed class plans, we observe that they maintain a certain dialogue with the proposal of the Environmental Radioactivity, although two of them emphasize the aspects directed to its application. In spite of the limiting factors imposed on training as time, the results of this formative experience indicate that the proposal presented here has the potential to better conceptualize and re-dimension the concepts and manifestation of Radioactivity as a school content, and that are worth discussing theoretically and pedagogically in initial training of teachers of the Natural Sciences.