O novo ensino médio e a alfabetização científica e tecnológica: o conhecimento de Biologia nos livros didáticos do PNLD/2021

Abstract

The textbook can be considered the most widely used resource in our classrooms, given its guaranteed free distribution throughout the national territory through the National Program for Books and Teaching Materials (PNLD), covering the entire Basic Education curriculum – from Early Childhood Education, the Initial and Final Years of Elementary School, and High School. Considering that textbooks have undergone profound changes in the way they present and organize their content with the implementation of the New High School curriculum in the country, we believe it is necessary to conduct more studies on this teaching resource. Here, we argue that these studies should also be guided by the framework of Scientific and Technological Literacy (ACT), since the school should aim to prepare students towards developing the capacity for critical understanding of their realities, so that, through the acquired knowledge, they can intervene in them directly or indirectly. Thus, the following research question has been established for this thesis: how can the activities in Natural Sciences textbooks, regarding Biology content – specifically in the field of Ecology – indicated by the PNLD/2021 for the New High School curriculum be related to the process of Scientific and Technological Literacy of students? The general objective of this research is: To analyze the activities in Natural Sciences textbooks, regarding Biology content – specifically in the field of Ecology – indicated by the PNLD/2021 for the New High School curriculum, based on the assumptions of STL, in order to identify their possible relationships with the process of Scientific and Technological Literacy of students. It is a qualitative study, with a bibliographic, documentary, and exploratory character. The methodological aspects of this research were organized into three stages: the first stage encompassing documentary research, organization, and study of official documents such as the National Curriculum Parameters (PCNs), the National Common Curriculum Base (BNCC), and analysis of the Alagoas Curriculum Framework for High School (ReCAL/EM); the second stage with the production of a Systematic Literature Review (RSL) on textbooks; and the third stage with the analysis of selected textbooks, where 3 collections of Natural Sciences and 3 books of integrative projects indicated by the PNLD 2021 were analyzed and selected according to the choices of teachers in the Alagoas state network. For this last analysis, we used the AC indicators proposed by Sasseron (2008) and the ACT indicators and the ACT Analysis Parameters in textbooks developed in this thesis. As a result of the comparative analysis of the learning materials (LD) collections, collection 1 - Matter, Energy and Life: An Interdisciplinary Approach - stood out the most, as it presented more indicators and parameters, as well as more activities with the new indicators proposed in this thesis. Despite this, the parameters related to the Transformative Practice indicator were rarely found or did not appear in the LDs. We emphasize that the absence of indicators and parameters suggests that the activities could have a broader scope for promoting ACT (Analysis, Transformation, and Communication) for students. Regarding the analysis of the Integrative Project LDs, the LD that stood out the most was PI3 - Looking to the Future, with the presence of a greater number of parameters and indicators. In general, we observed that the LDs show potential in terms of activities, as many of them required critical reflection, participation, engagement, intellectual autonomy, and student protagonism. These potentialities were observed in a more focused way in the PI LDs, since most of the projects presented a transformative approach to Scientific and Technological Literacy.