Física - de olho no mundo do trabalho: uma leitura materialista histórico-dialética do livro didático de física de Antônio Máximo e Beatriz Alvarenga

Abstract

This study critically analyzes the textbook Física de olho no mundo do trabalho (Máximo and Alvarenga), investigating how it articulates its eponymous thematic axis (Physics Focused on the World of Work) to the professional world. This analysis is conducted through the lens of Carlos Roberto Jamil Cury’s dialectical categories (contradiction, totality, mediation, reproduction, and hegemony), which are rooted in historical-dialectical materialism and Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony. The research is justified by the social relevance of work as an educational practice and by the textbook’s strategic role in mediating between scientific knowledge and reality. Its primary aim is to identify whether the textbook promotes critical education or reinforces the reproduction of social relations. Specific objectives include identifying approaches to the world of work presented in the textbook, relating these approaches to Cury’s categories, and discussing the work’s critical-reproductive potential. Methodologically, this is a qualitative documental study. It examines 25 professions presented in the textbook through the five dialectical categories. The results reveal that, although the textbook seeks to contextualize physics within the world of work, it predominantly reinforces a hegemonic and technicist perspective: professions are presented in a fragmented manner, highlighting utilitarian and technical aspects while omitting the social, economic, and environmental contradictions inherent in capitalist labor (such as inequalities of access, labor exploitation, socio-environmental impacts, and technological dependence). The study identified that the textbook naturalizes current productive models (automobile-centered mobility, the energy matrix), reproduces hierarchies of knowledge (valuing elite educational paths), and obscures conflicts such as the subordination of science to geopolitical and corporate interests. It is concluded that the textbook, despite its contextualizing proposal, embodies an uncritical reading of the world of work. This underscores the need for science education aligned with Historical-Critical Pedagogy, which would articulate physics content to the analysis of social relations and support emancipatory transformation. Cury’s categories proved effective in unveiling the ideological mechanisms present in the didactic material.