O diálogo entre saberes primevos, acadêmicos e escolares : potencializando a formação inicial de professores de Química na Amazônia

Abstract

This doctoral study intends to sustain relations of possible dialogues between three cultures: the local culture (primeval knowledge), academic and school culture. Similarly, it intends to strengthen the initial formation of Chemistry teachers in the Amazon. Therefore, it was necessary to check the engagement possibilities of Amazonian caboclo everyday life in the appropriation of systematic knowledge of Chemistry; create a mechanism to track the paths of ethnographic research, as well as identify the type of strategy that would best rescue the primal knowledge of the Amazon caboclo and how to turn them into school knowledge. We stress that it would not be possible to establish a dialogue between these three cultures, if we failed to reference the knowledge necessary for teacher training. So we opted for the studies by Lee Shulman (1986); by Clermont Gauthier et al (2013) and Maurice Tardiff (2014) to contribute to the training proposal. We hope to have achieved this feat, because it appealed to the central arguments of the dialogicity of the education act of Paulo Freire (2005) as a starting point for reflections and discussions of this knowledge in the initial formation of Chemistry teachers in the Amazon. We opted for the principle of Freire for emphasizing the development of local knowledge and the construction of multi-epistemological knowledge that transcend academic boundaries. Based on the reports and writings of some theorists like Almeida (2010), Levi-Strauss (2008), Chassot (2008), and Fraxe Witkoski (2007), Freire (2005), Diegues et al (2000), Balick and Cox (1996), found the Amazonian caboclo knowledge is as relevant as academic knowledge and needs to be rescued in a reflective perspective on a multicultural curriculum that directs our eyes to the Amazonian school, to get to know their subjects, their complexities and their doings. It was necessary to inquire about the specific conditions of the school, its history, its internal organization so that it can pedagogically deal with cultural diversity in this context. The locus of the research was Mocambo do Arari District where there were three Thematic Workshops done in collaboration with potters, family farmers, extractors of subsistence products, teachers and students of higher education and basic education. The study involved twenty students of initial training, three Chemistry Professors from the Amazonas State University, Parintins Campus. Data were obtained through on-site observation, non-directive interviews during field visits from 2012 to 2014, in which approximately 20 older people from two communities were contacted. The results of the Thematic Workshops and the controlled experiments were organized, analyzed and constituted essential elements for the dialogue between the local, academic and school cultures. Previous experiences and this study direct our eyes to aspects of Chemistry education in the context of science education. There is a need for further studies so we can better understand the relationships between primeval knowledge, Science knowledge and school knowledge in the teaching-learning process.