Atividades práticas de biologia: o uso de uma sequência de ensino investigativa sobre o ciclo celular

Abstract

The traditional way of exposing the contents of Biology contributes to the teaching fragmentation, understanding difficulties, applications and/or correlations with students' daily life, as observed in the cell cycle content. Thus, alternative methodologies can be used as tools to aid and improve the teaching process. Problembased learning (PBL) using investigative teaching allows the student to lead the knowledge construction with their active participation in seeking solutions for problemsolving under the teacher guidance. This study aimed to evaluate an Investigative Teaching Sequence (ITS) with a didactic model and the Allium cepa L. test for the cell cycle teaching, as well as to analyze the acquired knowledge progression and the students' perception with methodologies used in the ITS. This research was approved by the Research Ethics Committee (CEP-UESPI 2.609.879) and carried out with students from two public schools (Federal and State) and a private school from Floriano city (PI), who answered the questionnaires pre- and post-test with subjective and objective questions. Motivating questions were used in the ITS, with the instigating the students purpose to reflect and to seek the answers from the application of the methodologies. In the didactic model that consists of assembly pieces, the students represented the cell cycle phases from the structures and their functions recognition. In the A. cepa test, it was possible to analyze the cell cycle phases and observe the different forms that the chromosomes can acquire in each phase. The results were analyzed by the t-tests and Kruskall-Wallis (p <0.05) at the BioEstat 5.3 program and the normalized learning gain (g) was analyzed by the Hake equation. From the previous conceptions regarding the problematizations present in the ITS, it was verified that the students of the three schools possessed disconnected and fragmented knowledge regarding the cell cycle content, which one was proven by the answers of the pre-test. In this questionnaire, the students of the Federal school presented better results in the subjective questions and the ones of the private school in the objectives. In the comparison of the powders with the pre-test, there was a significant improvement in the responses of the students from the three schools to all questions (subjective and objective). In the comparison of the post-test between the schools, Federal and Private students presented better results than the State students. Regarding the progression of the knowledge about the cell cycle, the values of g (total) were high (g ≥ 0.70) for the Federal and Private and average (0.30 ≤ g <0.70) for the State. The methodologies applied in the ITS were considered satisfactory and had great acceptance by the students of the three schools. Therefore, it was found that the use of ITS facilitated the understanding of the dynamics involved in the cell cycle and its implications for the constitution of living beings, minimizing the distance between theory and practice.