Discursive interactions and the use of analogies in physics teaching

Abstract

In the last few years, Science Education researchers have shown new ways do conceive the processes of teaching and learning, demanding the displacement from the individual understanding of specific phenomena to a new context, which means, to a bias of meanings construction in a social context. However, still there are few researches concerned with how teachers give support to the process throughout the students build meanings in science classrooms, about how these interactions are produced, developed and, in what level they indeed interfere in students’ learning. This research tries to move forward in this line of research, investigating the interactive discursive processes related to the figures of speech (in this case, analogies), particularly about the context of its creation, working out and exploration in physics classrooms. One of the questions which allowed that reflection was that to explain scientific concepts in classroom involves, even to understand contents, as to be able to communicate this content in a more effective way. Does the posture assumed by teachers in the conversational aspect, during the discursive interaction, has contributed or influenced the rise and exploration of analogies in classrooms? To answer these questions we adopted a qualitative and interpretative approach, trough which we analyzed a sample of 23 futures high school physics teachers, during a semester, when the development of supervised practicum activities, carried out in the two last semesters of their undergraduate program, done in a public state university in São Paulo, Brazil. Data collected show that it is necessary more discussion about the use of analogies in teachers initial training programs; taking account its function, benefit or disadvantage, how to explore analogies in a more effective way. Besides that, how the discursive interactive context among teacher and students can interfere in the teaching and learning processes in classroom. We notice also, through the different kind of interaction, the discourse importance to the meanings shared construction among future teachers and students.