CHALLENGES AND POSSIBILITIES FOR ADOLESCENT GIRLS TO GET INVOLVED WITH NATURE'S SCIENCES
Studies indicate that gender inequality, social exclusion and historical factors put girls and women at a disadvantage compared to courses in Natural Sciences. For this reason, science education can be developed with activities that contribute to a more comprehensive and inclusive science, as in the perspective of teaching by research. The objective of our research was to understand the dynamics of involvement and participation of adolescent girls, in didactic teaching situations through investigative activities, in an extension action at the Federal University of ABC. Our analyzes focus on understanding whether girls participated more frequently than boys, how interactions occurred, whether the attitudes and actions of mediators contributed to promoting greater participation of girls in gender equity. The research audience was students from schools located in the ABC region of São Paulo, aged between 13 and 14 years of the final years of elementary school (8th and 9th years). In addition to the didactic applications, lectures were also given on methodology for the construction of scientific knowledge and interviews with researchers from the UFABC University. We also compared the data collected with data from the previous survey conducted by Almeida (2018), which showed the potential of investigative activities for greater involvement of girls between 9 and 10 years of age with the natural sciences. The methodological development of the research has a qualitative focus, the context was video-recorded and the data are being analyzed.