Abordagem da Paleontologia a partir da BNCC e das percepções de professores de Ciências e Biologia

Abstract

Paleontology is a science that plays an important role not only by dealing with phenomena that happened throughout Earth's history, but also by seeking to know the history of life and its evolution, for example. However, its insertion in basic education is still little explored and very scarce since only few teachers have experience with Paleontology. Thus, knowing the teachers’ perceptions and the challenges they face regarding their approach to Paleontology becomes important to open discussions that can enable strategies to insert this theme appropriately in the reality of these professionals. Therefore, the objective of this work was to understand and discuss how the approach of contents related to Paleontology by science and biology teachers occurs, through their perceptions and difficulties. This investigation had a qualitative approach, using an electronic questionnaire sent via e-mail as a tool for analysis, with the participation of five teachers from the basic education network in the state of Ceará. As a result of the research, it was found that teachers have a coherent perspective about what Paleontology is and that they consider it an important subject to be taught in basic education; they have different methodological ways of approaching the subject, but always within their realities. However, the teachers believe that they could seek pedagogical innovations that would facilitate the teaching-learning process of Paleontology: they recognize that the current educational curriculum acts as a guiding document but is far from the real approach in the classroom. All of the teachers also have difficulty introducing Paleontology in their classes and believe that there are different approaches to this subject in distinct levels of education. Finally, it is concluded that better approaches, supported by liberating education and teachers, become indispensable to overcome the lack of Paleontology teaching through alternative methodologies.