Realidade e imaginação: ensinando radioatividade com Role Playing Game

Abstract

The dynamic transformations that the current world is undergoing make it necessary for students to explore scientific problems, developing new ideas and connections between different areas of knowledge. An important, but neglected, aspect in the process of learning scientific concepts is imagination, which is present, mainly, in the production of scientific models and theories. Aiming to rescue this topic and better understand its influences on the teaching and learning of science, we defined what imagination would be, from the perspective of the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard and how it would possibly relate to the learning process. Then, with the help of the Role-Playing Game (RPG), we built an interactive science fiction story, which would produce an environment conducive to the emergence of the “Bachelardian imagination”. During the adventure, we address the topic of radioactivity, which serves as a basis for discussing complex scientific concepts, practical applications and relevant ethical and social issues. The target audience for the research was third-year high school students at a state school in the city of Manaus, in Amazonas. We used the triangulation of methods in a semi-structured interview, a focus group and transcriptions of audio recordings of RPG sessions to analyze, inside and outside the game environment, what types of imagination were evoked by the students, whether their communication presented characteristics of scientific dissemination and whether there was learning of the concept, according to Bachelard's perspective. The result of this research indicates that the type of imagination evoked depends on the characteristics of the environment in which the student finds himself. Greater social interaction produces dynamic imagination, while lesser interaction produces material imagination. However, if the epistemological obstacles present in the students' prior knowledge are not well understood, it will not be possible to develop adequate learning on the topic covered. Finally, it is also observed that it is possible to find some elements inherent to scientific dissemination in the students' speech, despite being incomplete.