Aprendizagem baseada em problemas: Metodologia ativa para o ensino da química de polímeros

Abstract

Polymers are becoming more and more widespread in our day-to-day life, as their development has brought innumerable benefits to modern society. These materials, due to their properties, can be used in packaging of commercial products, in fibers of clothes and even in kitchenware, but their indiscriminate use generates solid residues that spend many years to degrade and end up harming drastically to the medium environment. This subject is part of the programmatic content of secondary education and is of paramount importance to the citizen training of secondary school students, but it is not always taught in the classroom because of the short time to deliver a vast amount of content. For this reason, this work presents a proposal of teaching of Polymers Chemistry through Problem-Based Learning (PBL), which consists of an Active Learning Methodology (ALM) that emerged in opposition to the traditional model of teaching. The work was carried out in a class of 3rd year of high school in a public school in Fortaleza / CE and for its planning, Volume 3 of two textbooks on Chemistry was consulted. Initially, the professor of the discipline taught a dialogic class to introduce the topic of polymers that served as the starting point for the didactic intervention, where an expositive lecture was given with the objective of maturing the concept of polymers and bringing necessary information about the classification and properties of the polymers that would be useful for the resolution of a problem situation based on the generation of plastic waste and its recycling. For the proposition of this problem situation, a narrative contextualized with the reality of the students was elaborated and that counted on the aid of a pedagogical material involving experimentation that was constructed to be used by the students in this activity. At the last moment, a questionnaire was applied to evaluate the learning method, the objectives of the research and the chemical concepts that were learned by the class on polymers. In conclusion, it was observed that students, when informed that they would solve a problem, sought to participate actively in the lecture and showed previous knowledge that was evidenced through associations of the information exposed in class with their daily life. They were able to fulfill all the proposed activities working as a team and collaboratively in solving the problem. The answers to the questionnaire showed that the students approved the methodology used in this work, they were aware of the environmental preservation and they clearly learned the main chemical concepts about the content of polymers. Keywords: Problem-based learning. Chemistry of polymers. Recycling. Plastics.