Discutindo avaliação no ensino de ciências para estudantes do ensino fundamental: uma estratégia metodológica baseada em múltiplas representações e neurociência

Abstract

Thinking about evaluation requires reflection, not only on a technical, but also a political process. Discuss evaluation involves a reflection, not only of the teaching practice, but also a set of factors influenced by the school community. Therefore, we must contemplate different objectives, procedures, instruments, and, above all, to value the social and affective dimension in which students and teachers are. Brazilian law shows that the qualitative aspects should overlap the quantitative on how to evaluate students, however, it does not objectively establish how to structure this model. There is in the literature a wide debate, with few practical investigations, about how these aspects can be contemplated in the evaluation instruments, including in science teaching area. In this sense, one of the great difficulties in science teaching is to make students take ownership of the different instruments and symbols used to represent scientific discourse, according to the curricular norms and international evaluation programs for the area. The research line of the Multiple Representations, and recent neuroscience studies point out the importance of different forms of communication in the teaching and learning process as a way to enhance the cognitive and neural process, so related to the learning process. However, the major challenge we encounter is how to evaluate the use of different methodological strategies used in science education, and for this it is necessary to give up uniform and conventional evaluative practices. The evaluation should support decisions regarding student learning, focusing on the process and not just focusing on one product. The use of representational variance evaluations is necessary and can further qualify the process of education in science. With this problematic, through an action research with students from a public school we structured a Methodological Strategy that sought to bring coherence between the process of teaching learning, and the evaluation tools for a group of scientific concepts for a sixth grade elementary school class. It was possible to discuss different aspects, analyzed through different quality judgments. With this, we realize the importance of respecting the rhythm, and the way each student builds their knowledge in the different representational modalities. This leads us to infer that different representations encourage differentiation, not indifference in the classroom. Thus, we believe that the way the evaluation instruments were inserted in this Methodological Strategy, established themselves as a viable alternative assessment for elementary school, consistent with the different representations employed. In addition, this action research sought to narrow the gap between, what the legislation and literature establish, and what is actually practiced in the classroom at Science Teaching.