As tipologias dos estudantes brasileiros em relação ao interesse em ciências e tecnologia: uma análise baseada nos projetos Rose e Barômetro Brasil

Abstract

Science education and the school curriculum have been based on what is believed that students should learn, consensus or not, often neglecting what students want to learn. It is not the case to focus only on what young people want to learn, but to use students' interests to teach what needs to be taught. Knowing the interest of young people in the sciences is important both from a curricular and a classroom point of view, since it has the potential to foster motivation, an important factor to ease the teaching and learning process. Seeing this importance, several researches have been developed to know the voice of the students. In the Brazilian scenario, some studies stand out in this context, such as those that used the ROSE questionnaires (The Relevance of Science Education) and Barômetro, both developed by the Research Center on Education, Dissemination and Epistemology of Evolution "Charles Darwin" (EDEVO-Darwin) of the University of São Paulo. From the EDEVO-Darwin partnership and the Graduate Program in Education in Sciences: Chemistry of Life and Health of the Federal University of Santa Maria, arise the present study, in which the data obtained by the ROSE and Barômetro applied in Brazil were used. The research aimed to use the answers in the sections What I want to learn from both instruments to elaborate typologies of Brazilian students facing their interests in science and technology as well as to discuss them from a socioeconomic and cultural perspective. To achieve this goal, cluster analysis was used to first group the questions of the sections mentioned above in relation to the students' answers and then to group the students according to their interests. These two groups generated the typologies, which were later characterized by socioeconomic and cultural interests and characteristics. From this methodological trajectory resulted four typologies: Reluctant, young people with low interest by sciences; Enthusiasts, students with a keen interest in science; Non-Selective Indecisives, who presented a median interest in all the subjects researched, and Selective Indecisives, who have an average interest similar to Non-Selective Indecisives, but with a high interest in subjects such as science and scientists and very low interest in subjects such as agriculture. In addition, each typology presented different characteristics in relation to the two socioeconomic and cultural variables available in the questionnaire, which indicates an influence of these factors on the distinction between each typology. The results presented great potential for science education, from both a curricular and a classroom point of view, which can help motivate students and consequently facilitate the learning of young people.