Bibliographic review of ENPEC meeting Minutes on the teaching of science in the first years of elementary school: continuing education for teacher

Abstract

This article represents the expansion of an initial paper sent to the XIII ENPEC/2021 that aims to investigate how the continuing education for teachers (CET) working with young children on Natural Sciences (NS) has been historically carried out and presented in the editions of the National Meeting of Research in Science Education (ENPEC - 1997 to 2021). This is an exploratory research, of the bibliographic study type and was constituted from data from 14 complete papers, which were selected and analyzed in the light of Discursive Textual Analysis (DTA). In the categorization process, eight categories of analysis emerged: 1) training needs; 2) teaching concepts; 3) conceptions about training; 4) characteristics of the subjects; 5) training methodologies; 6) formative process and how the subjects felt; 7) direct results of training; and 8) post-formation (legacy), organized into three periods: pre-formative, formative and post-formative, interspersed with transitional units. After analyzing the works year by year, less than 1% of the papers published in this event and only 10% of the selected ones met the objectives of this research. The units of meaning representing the pre-formative period showed the deficiency in the initial training of educators in training, the importance of knowing the skills to work NS, planning, conducting and evaluating the teaching process, in addition to the importance of continuing the reflection process and teacher training. The two most pronounced characteristics among the educators in training were the need to deepen their conceptual knowledge in NS and the attempt to change their teaching methods after the group reflections. In the formative period, the teachers went through moments of reflection and reformulation of their practices, formation of concepts and changes in their vocabularies about NS. The direct results of the training showed that the educators in training were able to reflect on the action, face their problems, and change their attitude towards the teaching of NS, in addition to being motivated to create new strategies to achieve their goals in the classroom. In general, the researchers/trainers observed some methodological changes, safety to teach NS and the overcoming of some difficulties in the initial training of teachers, as well as a greater involvement of students during classes and the creation of collective spaces for discussion in Schools, which, until then, did not exist in these places. It is hoped that this work will contribute to researchers in the teaching area of NS in order to qualify their continuing education actions aimed at teachers in the early years, as well as to elucidate some gaps to be explored in research on the subject.