Evolução biológica: percepções de professores de Biologia de Santa Maria, RS

Abstract

The theme Biological Evolution is of extreme importance in the field of Biology, mainly for allowing an integrated view from knowledge about living beings. From the point of view of its didactic transposition, the theme is problematic, because it shows itself permeated by epistemological obstacles, of ideological, philosophical and theological base. This makes its approach in classroom context particularly difficult, both in teaching, by teachers and in learning by pupils. It was taken into account the importance of Biological Evolution to be effectively worked in the schools joining it to other biological knowledge. This work aimed to identify and analyze the conceptions on Biological Evolution of Biology teachers of the high schools in the state public schools of Santa Maria. This research was of qualitative approach, using a questionnaire as collecting instrument. For analyzing the data, the content analysis was used, which prioritized the textual analysis to biological evolution concepts, from which the categories emerged. These categories are: meanings of the evolution, evolutionary process functions, evolutionary factors and evolutionary dimensions. According to the response adequacy, the categories emerged from the analysis of evolutionary theory and human evolution issues. The evolutionary theory, though corroborated by several authors, still causes dilemmas in the cognitive thought of the teachers of biological area. This is caused by the overlapping of ideas defended by theory with other social, religious and mainly epistemological aspects.