A contextualização como ferramenta facilitadora no aprendizado do conteúdo de radioatividade

Abstract

Radioactivity occurs when an unstable nucleus releases particles (protons and neutrons) or energy to acquire stability, these are the so-called radioactive decays. In everyday life, there are countless areas that make use of this science, such as agriculture, medicine, general industry, and others. Considering its relevance to society and the superficial way it is treated by some high school textbooks, it is very important to teach this topic meaningfully. There are several tools in the classroom that can be used for the meaningful learning of various contents, one of them is contextualization, which consists of relating the new content to the concepts that the student, in a certain way, already possesses. Ausubel states in his theory that by relating the students' prior knowledge (subsumes) to the new knowledge to be acquired, learning occurs more effectively, making this knowledge something lasting and applicable. However, the use of advance organizers is necessary, which has the fundamental role of making the connection between new knowledge and subsumes. In the present work, news articles were used as advance organizers because they are inserted in the social, cultural and economic reality of students, in addition to news, films, series and even memes can also be used. To verify the effectiveness of contextualization in the meaningful learning of students, a questionnaire was used for the qualitative collection of data and its interpretation occurred with the comparison of the results found with the results already found in the literature. From the analysis of the results, it can be concluded that there was significant learning by the students, since they, in addition to understanding the concept of radioactivity correctly, were also able to exemplify its use in everyday life. Keywords: radioactivity; contextualization; meaningful learning