Diferentes percepciones de un mismo ambiente: la cuestión del género en la enseñanza de la ciência

Abstract

This paper relates some considerations resulting from a thesis study in Biological Sciences held at State University of Sao Paulo, Campus Bauru. Considering the perceptual act endowed with simultaneous actions of the cognitive apparatus and the individual’s life history as the merleau-potyana phenomenon tells us, the work aimed to identify how boys and girls in elementary school realize a natural environment in the forest. The study was realized with the extension project “Walking and learning at the forest” in the Center for Memory and Dissemination of Science and Technology (CDMCT) of Postgraduate Education for Science in the same institution. Classes were held in these practical activities, monitored by undergraduate and graduate students, and, the project focuses on students from public and private schools in Bauru and region, and other visiting groups. Data collection was performed using the representations in the form of free drawings of students of their environment after the activity. Through qualitative and quantitative analysis, the results allowed us to highlight differences in the way in which genders perceived and thus represented the fragment of forest vegetation. The male drawings contained a larger amount of non-living elements, whereas the representations by women, besides their botanical details, often drew on animals and people. The framework of the drawings by the boys took the nearest way, whereas by the girls more often considered the representations and the entire context of the site visited. So, we emphasize the need for further discussions within the perception of the environment to consider differences in the representations of boys and girls within the context of the teaching of natural sciences, seeking, however, to avoid unsubstantiated preconceptions that may cause any degree of discrimination.