Raízes do conhecimento: etnobotânica e as encruzilhadas nos livros didáticos

Abstract

This work is rooted at the crossroads between curriculum, textbook, and ancestral knowledge about plants, taking ethnobotany both as a field of knowledge and as a political gesture of reapproaching what is lived and what is taught. It begins with the understanding that the curriculum is a territory of symbolic disputes, where not all voices have the same space or value. The research seeks to understand the relationships that ethnobotanical knowledge present in 6th-grade Science textbooks, adopted by the PNLD 2024–2027 in the municipality of Maceió, establishes with the formative guidelines of the BNCC and ReCAL. The analysis is guided by Maingueneau’s discursive perspective, in dialogue with authors who understand the curriculum as a field of dispute, such as Lopes, Macedo, and Arroyo, along with contributions from ethnobotany and counter-hegemonic epistemologies. The methodology articulates two analytical fronts — here classified as contextual and discursive — aimed at focusing both on content and on the ways of speaking and silencing. A floating reading of the Science textbook collections used in Maceió led to the selection of the 6th-grade volumes, as they concentrate more occurrences of content related to the theme. The analyses indicate that, although there are occasional attempts to include traditional knowledge in ethnobotanical contexts, they generally appear in a peripheral way, disconnected from the subjects and practices that originate them. LD1 presents excerpts that more consistently dialogue with the principles of ethnobotany, while LD2 and LD3 bring sparse and poorly integrated mentions. Even though the curricular guidelines emphasize the value of cultural diversity, the analyzed materials still operate mostly under a Eurocentric logic, showing little sensitivity to the voices that inhabit school territories. In conclusion, the study defends the importance of future research focusing on school daily life and educational planning, aiming to understand the effects of these silences and to contribute to a more plural, rooted Science education committed to the dialogue between different knowledge systems.