Ensino de Botânica: contribuições dos mapas conceituais como uma metodologia alternativa para a construção do conhecimento

Abstract

The difficulty for students to learn botanical content is known and reported in many Works related to science teaching. In addition, many teachers fail to achieve the objectives of the teaching. In some cases, when teaching botanical content, they do not take into account the students' reality and their previous knowledge about the subject, and most of the students have more difficulty assimilating the content. Thus, this work aimed to verify if the alternative of using conceptual maps (active methodology), within a class prepared based on the Three Pedagogical Moments, contributes to better student learning. The study was carried out in a public school in Cruzeiro do Iguaçu, with a seventh grade class. Two classes on the same botanical content were applied in two distinct and temporally spaced moments; one of them was given entirely in an expositive way, with little dialog, and the other one using the conceptual maps approach. To verify learning, two identical questionnaires were applied to the students, and compared to evaluate the students' performance. Another questionnaire was applied to the class teacher, in order to verify her perception of the effectiveness of the teaching methodologies used. The results of this study show that the strategy of including the proposed construction of concept maps during class instigated greater participation and interaction of students during the explanation of content, promoting more dynamism and student participation in the process of knowledge construction, which led to greater learning, compared to the traditional methodology. Thus, it is concluded that the use of concept maps in a class based on the Three Pedagogical Moments allows for a more effective teaching and learning process of botanical content.