Abordagem investigativa como fator de motivação em três cursos da área de Química de uma instituição pública do Estado de São Paulo

Abstract

Laboratory classes have great potential to motivate students in science courses, whether to learn new knowledge or to demonstrate what they have already learnt. There are some ways of working in the laboratory and two draw attention: the traditional method where the student receives a script ready to develop the practice, and the inquiry approach where, among other characteristics, the student themselves develops their procedure, provided that they have the necessary prior knowledge. In this research, the inquiry approach was applied in three courses in the area of Chemistry at the Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de São Paulo – Campus Capivari: two technical courses and a higher degree in Chemistry. Another important point in this research is motivation, which can be defined as what leads us to perform a certain action. We can be motivated to carry out the actions and the reasons can be internal or external; and if there is no motivation, we will not take the action or do it below our capabilities. That is why the study of motivation is so important in education. One of the theories that have motivation as an object of study is the self-determination theory (SDT), in which it is stated that there are basic psychological needs that are closely linked with intrinsic motivation. In this research we study the motivation of the participating students through the academic motivation scale, and mainly through a semi-structured interview, followed by a textual discourse analysis. The main conclusions were: (i) it was possible to perceive positive changes in meeting the basic psychological needs of students (autonomy, belonging, and competence); (ii) work as an inquiry approach represented a differentiating factor in relation to classes run by the traditional method (prior to the project), according to the students.