Estratégias Didático-Pedagógicas para Inovar no Ensino das Ciências:

Abstract

The promotion and development of essential skills in school and in life may be considered innovative teaching-learning practices. Such innovative practices, by fomenting explicitly and intentionally critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication – all four pillars of significant learning –, may help to promote those skills. In the present paper, we share didactic-pedagogical strategies that may be used in teachers’ practices in Sciences in the 2nd Cycle of Primary Education, for the identification, analysis, and deconstruction of alternative conceptions in Science, in the wider frame of a Science-Technology-Science/Critical Thinking (STS/CT) approach. We propose examples of such strategies (namely, concept cartoons, the participation of an invited guest, the construction of concept maps, and socio-scientific controversy), which are presented in the context of a didactic sequence from our own authorship, and which were adapted to the essential learnings of this study cycle. After selecting the organizing topic of the essential learnings of the area and year we were interested in (5th grade Natural Sciences), the didactic sequence was designed to include didactic-pedagogical strategies specifically aimed at promoting students’ critical thinking. This for the identification, analysis and deconstruction of alternative conceptions of Science, namely in concern to factors that jeopardize local biodiversity, prevention measures that may be adopted, and how can students critically take a stand on such topics. Through such innovative pedagogical practices, teachers may innovate in their classroom and create impacts inside and outside it.