Discussing science teaching assessment for students the elementary school in science teaching: A pedagogical didactic strategy based on multiple representations and the neuroscience

Abstract

Discussing assessment is a complex yet necessary task, since many of the educational political decisions are taken based on current assessment instruments. Brazilian legislation prescribes that the qualitative aspects should overlap the quantitative aspects on how to assess the students. However, the quantitative indicators are the ones that prevail in our educational assessment system. There is in the literature a broad debate on the aspects that must be contemplated in the assessment instruments, being no different in the area of Science Teaching (ST). Based on the current contributions of neuroscience to education, we understand that each individual carries a unique set of neural images, arising from a unique context that makes them understand the world in a particular way. Respecting this cognitive individuality, the line of investigation of the Multiple Representations (MR) defends the use of different symbolic forms in the speech of ST. This respect for cognitive diversity deserves to be integrated into the assessment, structuring it according to the representational mode used in the teaching and learning process. Therefore, our work seeks to foster the discussion on assessment in basic education, presenting a form of union and interrelation between the teaching and learning process, and the assessment tools, exemplified through an Assessment Didactic Strategy (ADS). Aimed at ST, this strategy was structured under the bias of qualitative assessment, guided by representational diversity and the foundations of neuroscience. Being one of the authors of this study a researcher and teacher of elementary school, we carried out the applicability of this strategy in a class of the sixth year of elementary school, in a municipal public school, in the municipality of Uruguaiana/RS. Through action research, we seek to promote a critical and humanistic perspective in the focus of assessment, so that it starts to value different forms of expression, and not just those that are dictated by market demands. The content generated in this action research results from an action undertaken as an experiment, in a real classroom situation. As a result of this action investigation, we note the influence of students’ prior knowledge on the construction of their own knowledge. Besides that, when offered an alternative way to expose their ideas, they expressed in an authentic and genuine way, sometimes, representing symbols of their daily lives. In a practical group activity, used both as a teaching resource and as an assessment tool, allowed us to perceive skills that only excel in experimental activities. This multiplicity of representations, adopted in our ADS, challenged us to analyze the different responses expressed in the assessment instruments established, through different value judgments, because the quality of the assessment is also respecting the diversity, to the pace and the way in which each student builds their knowledge in different representational modalities. That way, with the content generated by the present work, we hope to contribute to the continuous advance of an assessment practice that is developed during the teaching and learning process, and that is not restricted to just one final stage.