In this work we seek to investigate in what terms the use of figures of speech, such as analogy, can express a contribution or an obstacle to the problem solving activities that were developed during the fifteenth and sixteenth editions of a Vacation Course in the city of Salinópolis (PA). The subjects studied were a group consisting of five students (SG) and a group of five teachers (TG), who participated in the 1st and 2nd weeks of the course, respectively. The objectives pursued in this research are to verify which analogies are elaborated by these subjects and what treatment was given by the course monitors accompanying such groups, and to evaluate whether there are differences between the analogies that are proposed by the group of students and those that are proposed by the group of teachers, questioning them, if that is the case. The methodology used to form the empirical data was qualitative and was obtained through video recording and subsequent transcription of the dialogues, in which the occurrence of analogies was observed. From the examination of the materials, I pointed out the emergence of categories that I have denominated Inquisitive Generated Analogies (IGA), Doubtful Generated Analogies (DGA) and Affirmative Generated Analogies (AGA), based on the procedures established by the Textual Discourse Analysis. In contrast, it was configured as obstacles in the moments that have not been properly explored and problematized, being the role of the monitors key to the better utilization of this language resource, although it is not the purpose of the course to work on the Analogies. I also noticed that the types of analogies created by students and teachers belong to the same categories described above, however those created by the teachers showed up, at times, more elaborated than the ones proposed by the students. I consider that the discussions on the use of analogies in teaching and learning situations, involving problem solving, need to be expanded, so that its functions, uses, advantages and disadvantages, as well as more effective ways of exploring it, become better understood in these processes. In the specific case of the Vacation Course, I believe that a work before the implementation of the courses, between their coordination and maybe a researcher-teacher in the area of Science Education, together with the monitors, so that they could be getting the most out of the analogies created by the course participants, could become an interesting proposal for the improvement of the discussions within each group.
|
