Cogitamus na sala de aula: desvios, traduções e híbridos na mediação tecnológica da física moderna no ensino fundamental

Abstract

With the changes promoted in the educational field by scientific and technological development fostered by contemporary sociopolitical structures, new and complex relationships are established between subjects and objects in the teaching and learning process. In Science Education, different digital artifacts are appropriated by teachers as a resource in the pedagogical mediation of concepts constructed by the scientific community. In order to deepen and better characterize the articulation between different actors in the classroom, we discuss in this research how digital mediation in the teaching and learning process of Modern and Contemporary Physics concepts for 9th-grade students establishes the production of hybrid mechanisms of cognition between humans and non-humans, in light of Bruno Latour’s generalized symmetry. To do só, we have chosen the phenomenon of nuclear fusion as the content of knowledge, which is foreseen as a knowledge object in the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) for Natural Sciences. In view of this, we adopt the articulation of three theoretical frameworks: the Theory of Networked Cognitive Mediation (TMC), responsible for discussing mediation mechanisms as processing external to the human brain and its implications in the cognitive structure of students; the Theory of Mental Models by Johnson-Laird, which classifies and categorizes types of mental representations; and the conception of non-modernity by Latour, which provides a systemic, reticular, and non-dichotomized view of reality construction. Initial results were obtained after analyzing the questionnaires and the verbal and gestural languages of the students. Subsequently, we interpret the results according to the concepts of hybridization, detours, and translations from Latour’s symmetrical anthropology. We found that digital mediation in this context influences the cognitive mechanisms used by students and the sophistication of the mental representations they construct. Finally, we acknowledge that both the teaching and learning process and the construction of mental representations through digital mediation constitute Latourian hybrids, as the actors involved begin to share human and non-human competencies.