Estrutura cognitiva de estudantes do ensino médio sobre contextos gerais ligados à Microbiologia.

Abstract

The cognitive structure of students is directly related to how knowledge is built throughout the school career. The lack of contextualization with the prioritization of teaching focused exclusively on the exposure and memorization of concepts may be related to the difficulties encountered in the construction of meaningful and appropriate knowledge regarding the themes related to microbiology. Thus, this study aimed to analyze the cognitive structure of high school students in relation to general contexts related to Microbiology, as well as to search for concepts and interactions between them, through the Word Association Test (WAT) with subsequent creation of word clouds in order to express and discuss in more detail the distribution of responses. It was possible to identify partial and decontextualized conceptions, problematized with the Teaching of Natural Sciences and its interfaces, which can serve as a reflection point for teaching practice.