String Literature and Science: an investigation of chemistry students' reading and representations
String Literature. Science teaching. Education in Chemistry. Representation.
This work was developed from an exploratory qualitative research that sought to analyze, the reading and representations produced by undergraduate chemistry students, the influences of a string text with a scientific theme for the understanding of the concept of solvation. The research was carried out with 19 undergraduate students in Chemistry from UFAL Campus Arapiraca in some classes of the discipline “Reading, Textual Production and Chemistry Teaching”. The booklet entitled “A Look at Unseen Chemistry” was produced by the author of this research based on the theme of solvation and founded the production of the data analyzed and presented throughout this work. The proposal was for students to read the text individually and then answer two questions about it, as well as, after reading, create an image representation (or sequence of images) related to the text read. After analyzing the empirical data, it was possible to identify representations that gave rise to emerging categories and subcategories. To analyze the results obtained, approaches were used based on their own representations foundations, as well as some inferences could be made based on the levels of chemistry that were evidenced in the productions of the undergraduates so that the influences of a string text with a scientific theme could be identified. for understanding the concept of solvation. As a result, it was identified that cordel texts have the potential to promote students’ thinking in diferente ways. From reading, for example, it was noticed reactions such as curiosity, imagination and affective relationships with the text. On the other hand, the representations produced evoked different forms of chemical thinking, sometimes based on the concrete dimension, but also linked to the theoretical-representational dimension, as well as extrapolating to aesthetic representations of knowledge. These results suggest the potential of cordel as a didactic support both for teaching chemistry and for cultural perspectives.