Análise documental dos conceitos de Física nas provas do ENEM (2020 - 2024)

Abstract

The National High School Examination (ENEM) is an assessment instrument for basic education and also serves as a pathway to higher education. Considering that the exam is characterized by a content-focused approach, aiming at the application of concepts by students, this study aimed to investigate the number of concepts present in the Physics exams of the ENEM from 2020 to 2024, as well as the most frequent subareas. The research is based on Zabala’s contributions regarding content typology and assessment, and on Ausubel’s theory of meaningful learning, whose ideas allow the understanding of concept acquisition. This is a quantitative, descriptive, and documentary research, in which the ENEM exams from 2020 to 2024 were analyzed to identify Physics concepts in the Natural Sciences questions. Data collection was carried out in two stages: initially, the Physics questions (statements and answer items) were read, and the identified concepts were organized into an electronic spreadsheet and classified according to their respective subareas. Then, the concepts and subareas were counted using absolute and relative frequency. The results show that each edition analyzed presents a large number of concepts, indicating that the Physics exam has high conceptual density and thematic diversity. The most frequent concepts were Velocity, Voltage, Electric Current, Sound, Temperature, Heat Transfer, Distance, and Frequency. Other concepts appeared less frequently. Furthermore, it was observed that the most recurrent subareas are Kinematics, Electrodynamics, Wave Physics, and Calorimetry, coinciding with the most frequently addressed concepts and showing oscillations in incidence over the years.