High school students argumentative writing backed up with empirical data obtained from experiments in biology. Masters degree education college / Escrita argumentativa de alunos do ensino médio alicerçada em dados obtidos em experimentos de biologia

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2008

RESUMO

At this research, we investigated how high school students write on an argumentative basis as they make use of empirical data provided by experiments in biology. Here we mean science as a cultural concept and, from a sociocultural perspective of the teaching-learning process, regard the teaching of science as a kind of enculturation. As far as this enculturation is concerned, the teaching of science involves multiple practices in class so as students are introduced to the language, rules and process of the scientific culture. We underwent a revision of how some processes has been articulated in experimental activities aiming to build scientific knowledge, specially the biological one. The focus of our work is placed on some aspects of scientific language in order to understand, firstly, how they appear in scientific papers, and, secondly, what would be their contact with scientific education, mostly relating to school essays. We present the argumentation pattern as an important point with regard to scientific language and as an essential item concerning the teaching of science within the enculturation process. Our investigation intends to analyze the building of an argumentative write by high school students backed up with the use of empirical data obtained from experiments in biology classes, thus approaching their write of what occurs in the production of scientific texts. The hypothesis of this work is that, in classes of open biological investigation, the analyses and discussions of the empirical data obtained by students promote the development of argumentative write. To investigate this process, we followed a didactic sequence of a teacher of biology in charge of a high schools first grade class. The question proposed by the teacher was: What is the importance of light for the growing of plants? Over three months, we recorded on video and on audio the material related to all experiments, and went through a series of discussions on the matter. To answer our initial statement over students argumentative write, we made use of outputs such as potential data and pupils individual reports. In possession of this material, we were not only able to analyze the different aspects of the scientific language, specially the argumentative write, using as support the so-called Toulmins2 argumentation pattern, but also realize the role of the empirical data as well as the biological concepts in the production of each student. We have learnt that, by giving students the opportunity of facing a diversity of long experiments in the laboratory of biology, and encouraging them to come to know about a range of empirical data, the teacher brings them close to the circumstances that preside the activities regarding the scientific culture, giving also incentive so as they feel themselves entitle to produce an argumentative write.

ASSUNTO(S)

linguagem escrita experiment in biology written language linguagem científica argumentation scientific language argumentação experimentação em biologia

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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