Mulheres na história da física: uma proposta de abordagem para o ensino médio

Abstract

Even when the History of Science is covered in high school Physics classes, it is very rare for any woman researcher to be mentioned. The invisibility of women in Physics results from a series of factors related to the consequences of a patriarchal world. Throughout the centuries, women had to overcome the prohibition of access to education, gender prejudice, difficulty in finding a job, housework, childcare, among other factors, to position themselves as scientists and researchers. The impacts of these struggles are still evident in the small number of women in Physics and the lack of encouragement for more girls to be inspired in the field. Therefore, to develop a teaching proposal to address female researchers and their contributions to the history of Physics in high school, it was sought to outline the elements associated with this approach. Through content analysis, articles on women in Physics were studied as well as the official national and state of Paraná education documents. Although supporting the use of History of Science, the official education documents do not present anything specific for discussions about women in Physics. Thus, the developed teaching proposal aims to bring this highly relevant discussion to light, to understand Science as directly connected to its time and place, besides showing girls that a scientific career is a possible path for them. In the format of an experience report, the applications of variations of the teaching proposal in first year high school classes of two schools in Curitiba were reported as a way to show other educators the flexibility of the activity and the perceived positive and negative points.