A disciplina biologia aplicada: sua produção no contexto das reformas curriculares nacionais do ensino médio.

Abstract

This work investigates a curricular innovation through the proposition and implementation of the Applicable Disciplines integrants of the High School curriculum. These disciplines were created by two public high schools in the city of Rio Claro in the period of 1999-2003 and they form a diversified core of the curricular grade. The objective established was to understand the genesis and implementation of the Applicable Biology discipline in both high schools, to characterize the construction of the Applicable Biology teaching from the perspective of the teacher(s) and to analyze the construction of the Applicable Biology considering the STS movement in teaching. Due to the fact that the uniqueness of this curricular innovation is restricted to just two high schools, this research presents itself as a case study. The data were collected from semi-structured interviews, notes from informal conversations and observation of the discipline classes as well as scholar quotidian. For the results analyses were utilized theoretical referential on curricular questions from the field of critical theory as well as from the scholar quotidian. For the dimension of the content it was adopted the perspective of the STS movement (Science, Technology and Society). As results there are the evidences that the process of production and implementation of this discipline at the high schools was related to the Reform through which High School went in the end of the 20th century and the search of both high schools to adequate, responding to the new educational scenario. The genesis of the discipline is connected to a social and subjective demand from students, direction, coordination and teachers and to a demand of national curricular directives. The legal structural support allowed the wished innovation to be placed in a disciplinary format. This contour materialized the wishes of the scholar communities by creating spaces that could deal with scientific content in a contextualized way. From STS s perspective the discipline permeated emerging thematic (environmental questions, biotechnology, ecological and health relations) utilizing local, regional and global aspects of the students quotidian; diverse sources of information; wider approaches on worked concepts; and methodologies that consider the students opinions, positioning and their decisions. In synthesis the Applicable Biology constituted a space/time in which students and teachers had the opportunity, in a more systematical manner, to produce answers to questions about the study area and rehearse processes of teaching-learning more freely. It configured a way of re-dimensioning the curriculum itself, embodying the teachers wish of escaping the current ties in the traditional conduction of Biology classes, rehearsing another possibility.