Formação docente e aprendizagem significativa: uma proposta de ensino sobre classificação animal e sistemática filogenética

Abstract

We can see that brazilian education has undergone constant changes, always with the aim of improving the quality of teaching and student learning. Based on this, teachers need to be in constant training, knowing the various teaching theories, including the Meaningful Learning Theory (MLT), proposed by David Ausubel and complemented by Novak and Gowin, still not widespread in Brazil. For this reason, in this study, a continuing education course was created and applied for teachers at a public state professional school, Clemente Olintho Távora Arruda, located in the interior of the state of Ceará. We aimed to identify strategies and teaching methodologies based on MLT, combining them with the contents of Biology, in particular Animal Classification and Phylogenetic Systematics. This biology theme is usually pointed out by teachers as complex and is undergoing an update, due to the Phylocode proposal, which brings new information about Phylogenetic Systematics. The study group consisted of five teachers, three men and two women, aged between 25 and 39 years old, two biologists, one physicist and two chemists. All were graduates in the Licentiate modality, one had a specialization and the other a master's degree, and all had at least five years of experience. The continuing education course implemented had a workload of 30 hours divided into five modules offered in the years 2020 and 2021, through in-press and on-line meetings, with synchronous and asynchronous activities, with readings, discussions and debates on the subject, in addition to allowing the elaboration of practical strategies. The professors brought as main problems the identification of “subsumers”, the differentiations, elaborations and applications of mental maps, conceptual maps and “V” diagrams and the use of TIC tools as support in the application of the MLT. For the teachers, the results were positive: the training made them want to learn more about the MLT; interest in applying the theory with other contents; they considered that it facilitates transdisciplinary; brings the benefit of creating more differentiated classes, which seek to promote student autonomy; and to including the use of TIC. Thus, it became clear that TAS can improve teaching and the acquisition of meaningful knowledge, in a more consolidated and lasting way, especially when associated with strategies that encourage student involvement, making them authors of their studies and learning.