A didatização dos conceitos de calor e trabalho em livros didáticos do PNLD 2021 à luz da Teoria da Transposição Didática

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the presentation of the concepts of heat and work in the scientific knowledge and compare it with the knowledge to be taught, present in Basic Education textbooks. There are two predominant perspectives in the teaching of these concepts: one that emphasizes their nature and the other that prioritizes their usefulness. The first concerns the logical construction of the concept, that is, epistemological aspects. On the other hand, the utilitarian approach tends to treat concepts as a product, without deepening the process involved in their definition. This simplification can lead to a superficial and fragmented understanding. To investigate this, a literature review was carried out on the historical formulation of the concept of energy conservation, focusing on heat and work. The main reference used was the book “Energy: Historical Development of the Concept” by R. Bruce Lindsay, which contains original historical excerpts. To carry out the analysis, books from the PNLD 2021 were used, adopting the Theory of Didactic Transposition (TTD), by Yves Chevallard, as a theoretical framework. The TTD allowed us to examine how scientific knowledge of these concepts was transformed into school knowledge, considering aspects such as publicity, programmability, depersonalization, desyncretization and decontextualization. Thus, it was observed that the concepts of heat and work are presented in a simplistic way, without considering their complexities and evolutions over time.