Formação continuada de professores de ciências no campo: um olhar para a realidade local e as questões sociocientíficas

Abstract

This research aimed to investigate the contributions of a continuing education course for in-service teachers, developed based on socioscientific issues, to the resignification of conceptions and the strengthening of more critical, contextualized pedagogical practices, committed to the realities of rural schools in Elementary School science classes. This study pursued answers to historical negligence related to rural education. For this reason, we proposed a continuing education course involving 13 science teachers from rural schools in the city of Itaperuçu, Paraná/Brazil. The course, developed in 2023, had a total duration of 40 hours, distributed in in-person meetings in the teachers’ workplaces, providing significant participation in the local educational context, as well as online synchronous activities and asynchronous moments. This was qualitative research and, for the data analysis, we utilized Laurence Bardin’s content analysis, as this granted the interpretation of the meanings behind participants’ statements. During the analysis, we presented four categories, namely: “Gaps identified in initial and continuing education”; “Initial effects in teacher practice”; “Teachers’ perception regarding the course”; and “Appropriation of socioscientific issues in science teaching”. All categories were, subsequently, divided into subcategories. This investigation, of participant nature, highlighted that the main challenges in science teaching originate from initial teacher education and are reinforced by the lack of continuing education opportunities. The course demonstrated potential for strengthening teachers’ formative competences, contributing to enhancing teaching quality. We observed, as a preliminary result, an increase in collaborative work and in new articulations in pedagogical practices. This formative experience encouraged the development of more contextualized and adequate approaches to the local needs and to rural schools. Because this study is a professional masters’ degree, we intend to have, as our educational product, a proposal for a continuing education course towards stimulating systematic reflection about pedagogical practice in rural school settings, similar to what we proposed in this study.