Homo sapiens expansion: um estudo sobre o ensino da pré-história e jogos para o sexto ano do ensino fundamental

Abstract

This work arose due to a recurrent problem in the historical teaching-and-learning process in the context of fifth-grade classes of elementary school over the last seventeen years of experience in the classroom while working with subjects/themes related to Prehistory. Such discomfort in the historical learning basis led to the conception of this dissertation through the ProfHistória/UFRN program. In order to carry out a research upon the teaching of Prehistory in the fifth grade of elementary school, the main studies on this subject were brought out and associated with the work in the classroom carried out at the Professora Iapissara Aguiar Municipal School (situated in the Panatis complex, in the northern area of the city of Natal) regarding the learning difficulties about this content. After a bibliographical survey and an analysis of the empirical practice of the process, previously used, the topic required methodological procedures applied into three major steps: first, a classification of theoretical references on Prehistory in order to understand the polysemy involved in the term; second, the carrying out of a qualitative-participatory research among teachers and students so as to seek empirical data for the work; and third, a detailed study on education, games and Prehistory teaching, associated with the concept of Historical Consciousness presented by Jörn Rüsen. Based on this perspective, the intervention product, the result of the studies and analyses contained in the research, materialized into the form of a game, named: “HOMO SAPIENS EXPANSION”. In order to help teachers and students who face the same difficulties, the game is based on the possibility of an experience from the concepts of education and the field of Prehistoric Archeology.