Da produção ao descarte do lixo: proposta de um projeto escolar de química no contexto do ensino fundamental II

Abstract

Thinking about the teaching-learning process in the current situation of Brazilian education, especially the teaching of chemistry, presents itself as a great challenge. The constant transformations in society cause significant changes in the social, political, cultural and personal relationships of the subjects that compose it. These relationships require critical, reflective and creative individuals. From this perspective, project pedagogy emerges as a possibility capable of providing the construction of knowledge based on current themes and students' daily lives. In view of this, we are guided by the following research question: how can the theme of waste developed from Project Pedagogy contribute to the development of science knowledge in elementary school II? From then on, the objective of this work was to develop, apply and evaluate a project that provides students with situations that encourage reflection and protagonism. To this end, a school project was produced based on Project Pedagogy, focused on providing moments of problematization, discussion, experimentation and application of knowledge built from the theme “waste: from production to disposal”. The application of this research was carried out in a municipal public school in the interior of the state of Rio Grande do Norte with students in the sixth year of elementary school. Data collection was done through audio and video recordings during the implementation of the school project and using questionnaires and interviews applied at specific moments. As a result, we achieved an improvement in the teaching-learning process of the concepts of chemical and physical transformations, homogeneous and heterogeneous substances and mixtures and during the development of the project we identified an evolution in the attitude and participation of students towards the redefinition of scientific knowledge. We also identified a change in waste treatment practices, as, at the end of the project, students were able to understand the importance of reuse and recycling as an alternative to burning waste in the open, which is an ecologically incorrect way of treating waste. The applied school project served as the basis for the preparation of the educational product and was published in the form of a digital teaching guide with the purpose of serving as a resource to help science teachers recontextualize the methodology within their school realities. We conclude that Project Pedagogy enables the teaching/learning process in a collaborative way, capable of establishing connections with reality and providing the application of knowledge.