An overview of physics and physics teaching in Brazil: Physicists, physics teachers and physics licensure programs

Abstract

This paper is part of a study that aims to present a panorama of the teaching of physics in Brazil, contributing to the memory of physics teaching in this country. It also aims to support research of greater amplitude, to be carried out in the future in other member countries of IUPAP (International Union of Pure and Applied Physics). In this part of the study, data from several sources were considered, among others, Brazilian Society of Physics (BSP), the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the Nacional Institute of Pedagogical Studies (INEP) and the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC). Due to the wide range of information obtained and the multiple possibilities of analysis, we chose to explore and interpret part of the data here and, for that matter, we used documentary analysis only. The data analyzed allowed us to establish, for example, relationships between the number of students attending high school in Brazilian public schools, the number of licensed teachers who work in these schools in each state of the country. These data also allowed us to link with data from the literature on the subject, which consider the causes of teaching avoidance and undergraduate courses in Physics, aggravating factors for the precarious situation of the medium level physics teaching in the country.