Carcinicultura: uma proposta para educação ambiental nas aulas de química do ensino médio

Abstract

Studies and research in the educational area has evidenced the importance of teaching focused on the exercise of citizenship, since the concepts must be approached in the classroom in a way that are related to the social reality in which the students are inserted. In this context, also includes the Teaching of Chemistry, which can contribute with discussions about the students' citizenship education. The field of STS studies and discussions about Environmental Education were the theoretical framework of this research, being possible to promote classroom discussions based on a contextualized teaching considering historical, social, environmental, ethical and economic issues. In this sense, this research aimed to investigate the social and environmental implications of the practice of shrimp farming in a public school in Natal - RN, to contextualize the teaching of chemical concepts related to this practice. In order to systematize this proposal, a sequence of activities (SA) was elaborated as an educational product to be used by teachers of Chemistry of Basic Education, in a class of 2nd year of high school. The locus of the research was the State School Professor Josefa Sampaio, that is located in the neighborhood Santos Reis, in the margin of the river Potengi, in Natal RN. In collaboration with the teacher of the discipline, didactic intervention was applied during six meetings. The classes were planned with the purpose of discussing the shrimp farming practice in the surroundings of the mentioned school. The data collection instruments used in this qualitative research were two questionnaires: the first one that includes questions related to students' previous ideas about this problem and the second, to obtain data about the application and evaluation of the sequence of activities. The results showed that although they live in the surroundings of the Potengi river and consume the shrimp, the majority of the participating students did not know the practice of shrimp culture in the State of the RN and do not recognize it in the surroundings of their school. However, after the application of the activities, they reported that the study of the theme was interesting and contributed to the understanding of the chemical concepts through the contextualization in the classes.