Banca de DEFESA: LAIS DA SILVEIRA MEDEIROS

Practices in the teaching of botany: between the methodological choices of teachers and non-traditional methodologies

Considering the great difficulties found in the ways of teaching botany in the country, which are perpetuated both by the lack of interest in the subject and by the methodologies used by teachers, we propose to understand the training paths of male and female teachers, their methodological choices and the conceptions about the methods used in their daily lives. This work aimed to identify predominant methodologies in teacher education, in graduation, in their botany classes, according to their formative memories, to analyze the teachers' conceptions about the different methodologies they experienced in training. The present work also aimed to identify, in the practices proposed by teachers for their performance in the classroom, which of these methodologies have characteristics according to the so-called active and participatory methodologies, which have been presented by the curriculum and by school institutions as paths for teaching performance, the in order to contribute to the training of students, allowing them more autonomy. Questionnaires with open and closed questions were applied, about the formative paths, influences in the planning of botany classes and the elaboration of a spontaneous lesson plan that approached some botanical theme, applied to male and female teachers. These data were submitted to discourse analysis, where it was possible to understand aspects of initial training in botany and the way of teaching botany, in addition to identifying the presence or absence of the so-called active and participatory methodologies, whether in initial training or in the approach proposal in the teaching plan. The results indicate that the majority of professors reported approaches to initial training as predominantly expositive, with sporadic events of laboratory practices and field trips, and even some misconceptions about nomenclatures of mentioned methodologies. Among the plans, it can be identified that in most of the proposed approaches there is no presence of active methodologies. From the data obtained, it can be concluded that there is a predominance of expository approaches and little participation, whether in initial training experiences or in the approaches proposed in the planning. Such results point to the need for training spaces so that male and female teachers have the opportunity to have contact with different methodologies and their concepts, which can bring such diversification to their practice.