Research learning projects: scientific literacy of 4th year elementary school students

Abstract

Health safety measures adopted during Covid-19 pandemics were a challenge faced by several sectors of the society and, most likely, academic and school activities brought up a few social and economic gaps as to digital inclusion of the population. This study, carried out during the pandemic period between 2020-2021, aims to present a few of the teacher-researcher considerations about the development of Research Learning Projects (PAI) with her 4th grade students at a city public school in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Research design for the study has an exploratory and qualitative approach and is based on Thiollent (1988) Action-Research. The action plan devised in the initial project had to go through several adjustments because of different moments lived by the teacher and her students. This included going through social distancing, with classes happening via Remote Learning (RL), to hybrid classes in cycles, which meant half the students would attend classes from home and the other half would be face to face at school. Research data were built based on the teacher-researcher 's log book and on the student-researchers’ registers while developing their research learning projects. To analyze the data, the technique used was Discourse Textual Analysis proposed by Moraes and Galiazzi (2006), with a few categories determined a priori focusing on the qualification of a student-researcher and the different stages towards building the research learning projects. In this paper, we focus on one category regarding scientific literacy and education of a student-researcher. We strongly believe the study may contribute to promoting scientific knowledge in Elementary Schools by engaging teachers and students in building and developing research in the classroom.