Modelagem matemática gerando ambiente de alfabetização científica : discussões no ensino de física

Abstract

Faced with the formative needs of the 21st century, it is reasonable to think that the teaching of physics requires more than definitions and formulas. In the perspective of an innovative education, in addition to concepts, students need skills that will enable them to argue with some degree of scientific basis for decision making and action in the face of the problems faced, ie, scientific literacy is needed. However, such education generally depends on the adoption of innovative and active approaches, such as mathematical modeling. In this scenario, the main objective of the present research is to characterize essential competences for scientific literacy and analyze factors that may potentiate or limit its developments in mathematical modeling in the context of physics teaching. The guiding question of the research is to know: in what sense can mathematical modeling as an educational approach in physics generate an environment for the formation of scientifically literate subjects? In the light of David Hestenes' modeling theory, the field research involved three modeling cycles whose themes were: noise pollution; paper trash and obesity. Participants were thirteen (n = 13) professors in an undergraduate course integrated in mathematics-physics, residents of the city of Almeirim, Pará, Brazil. The production of data involved participatory observation, application of open and closed questionnaires, written records, audio and video. The data produced were interpreted with the resources of the discursive textual analysis involving unitarization, categorization and metatext. From the perspective of the mixed methodology, three studies were carried out. The results of the first study show that mathematical modeling has a positive applicability to physics teaching, however, the choice of subjects, the lack of practice with investigative activities and insufficient time to perform certain tasks were cited by the teachers as challenges to be overcome. From the second study on, it is possible to construct competences to differentiate possible questions to be investigated scientifically, to evaluate ways to explore scientifically the issue and to produce scientific texts. Finally, the third study analyzed the speech of two teachers and suggests that scientific literacy can be enhanced by the sophistication of the arguments when the subjects cognitively support their discourses in mathematical models constituted by multiple tools of representation.