O ensino de Evolução Biológica na Educação Básica: Práticas de ensino e dificuldades apontadas por professores da rede estadual do Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The biological evolution theme has currently had a great reputation in the biologists community for its recognized central role, organizer of the biological thought. Its ideas are indispensable for the understanding of most of the concepts and theories found in Biological Sciences (MEYER & El-HANI, 2005). In the educational field, the evolution contents are elements of fundamental importance for the correct understanding and articulation among other concepts, theories and explanatory models in the teaching of science and biology, which is reflected on official educational proposals for the basic levels of national education. However, even with all acknowlegment, the teaching of evolution is still with many conceptual and methodological problems, besides philosophical and religious implications (TIDON & LEWONTIN, 2004). Despite the theme has been the target of several studies in Brazil for at least two decades, the number of researches that handle the issue in the context of basic education is still very small, and even lower the amount of researches that approach the methods and teaching practices of that content (OLIVEIRA, GOUW & BIZZO, 2013). This study investigates which resources and teaching practices are most used by teachers to teach evolution in basic education as well as identify possible difficulties encountered by them during the teaching of this subject. To achieve this, interviews were conducted with teachers from six public state schools in the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro. The results indicate that teachers do not consider the issue so relevant and that their teaching practices are directly influenced by their experiences and several difficulties as religious beliefs and impairment in educational background.