Ensino de física solar em um espaço não formal de educação

Abstract

Observatories and planetariums offer the possibility of developing contextualized astronomy teaching by fostering educational activities that provide access to a more authentic school science.Thus, this research consisted in developing, applying and evaluating courses about the Sun for middle, junior high school students and solar physics for high school students in an informal educational space, the CDCC/USP Astronomical Observatory.Topics of chemical composition, temperature and stellar evolution were taught in a room totally dedicated to the study of the Sun, a Solar Room, designed with simple and inexpensive equipment.The course strongly emphasized practical, observational and inquirybased activities, such as estimation of the solar surface temperature, observation of the visible solar spectrum, identification of solar absorption lines, understanding how they are produced, and what kind of information can be extracted from the observed spectral lines.Some of the course goals were to foster the comprehension of the key role played by spectroscopy in astrophysics, to contextualize contents with practical activities, and to allow interdisciplinary approaches including modern physics and chemistry in physics teaching.The research methodology consisted of a qualitative approach by filming the whole course and performing written questionnaires and semi-structured interviews.Before the courses were applied most students conceived the Sun as a hot sphere composed of fire, sunspots as holes in the Sun and solar prominences as magma expelled by volcanoes.After the courses students presented ideas about the Sun and solar physics more closely related to the ones accepted by contemporary science.This research was not restricted to students' cognitive gains after concluding the courses, since it considered the interaction of different contexts responsible for learning in science museums.This was possible due to the theoretical framework adopted: The Contextual Model of Learning of Falk and Dierking.Some challenges have to be faced by institutions such as the Astronomical Observatory in order to teach astronomy in an interdisciplinary form and with inquiry-based activities The activities developed at science centers must have as their main objective to motivate the public towards science, but it is also important to offer courses for volunteers, since language, contents and methodologies in longer activities can facilitate interdisciplinary approaches of Astronomy with other areas of scientific knowledge seldom explored in classrooms.This can happen when the school's educational project is collectively constructed including science museums, teachers, school and students by seeking to enhance teaching proposals that consider the out of school context and is related to contents taught in the classroom.

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