Do todo às partes e das partes ao todo, complexidade e transdisciplinaridade: a pedagogia de projetos e a resignificação da feira de ciências

Abstract

The deep changes experienced by the world, especially in the last century, have produced transformations in both social practices and at work. Education cannot remain unaware of these changes. Traditional teaching no longer responds to the 21st century. The use of methodologies committed to the “being”, “knowing” and “performing” are made necessary so as to contribute to the student’s education. Accordingly, the objective of this paper was to study alternative methodologies which aim at an interwoven contextualized and meaningful knowledge acquisition and apply them to the third year classes of both Agriculture and Food Processing Technical Courses concomitantly with the Central Education and Agricultural Development of The University of Viçosa/Florestal third year high school classes, analyzing and evaluating its contribution to the students’ development of cognitive, affective and social competences. In the beginning of 2010 the students of the above mentioned classes were invited to take part in a working project whose theme was low cost alternative energy. A working project methodology was used to develop the research and build four low cost solar heaters which were installed in the homes of four low-income families in Florestal – MG, being that the outcome of this project was introduced at the school Science Fair, which to these students it was presented under the view of complex thinking and transdisciplinarity. To verify the contribution coming from the applied methodology we used portfolios, active observation and questionnaire. The results have shown that all of the students have agreed that the development of a project aiming at the social side contributed to the improvement to their human side. The study also showed to the majority of the people surveyed that the implementation of a working project which was shown at the science fair under the transdisciplinary view contributed to a better articulation perception among the subjects which compose these technical courses. Moreover, the students notice that Physics can go beyond the education boundaries and also the school limits. Thus, we have reached an agreement that education not only has to aim at the cognitive side but also provide means to contemplate the three human action fields: social life, productive activity and subjective experience.