Processos de ensino e aprendizagem da biologia mediados por Webquests

Abstract

Biology teaching must prioritize the learning tending to research, and in this field we can count with technology, such as the internet and the computer which contribute to this process. The WebQuest can be considered a methodology to organize the teaching process using all the internet resources, which help students in the construction of knowledge in a mediated learning environment. What we look for answering in this research is what the contributions from the WebQuest to learning Biology are. For answering this question the WebQuests were made, from names “The fascinating world of cells” and “Web-classification”, and proposed to the first and second years of high-school in the process of teaching and learning Biology. The goal is to evaluate the process of pedagogical mediation by WebQuests. The methodological approach of this investigation fits into the perspective of the qualitative research, an ethnographic study. While analyzing the obtained data, the analysis of contents was used. The propose about the hypertext organization considering it as a space for building knowledge by Lévy (2006), supported and helped us reaching the objectives aimed. We also considered the historical-cultural learning theory from Vygotsky, in which the cognitive development results from the interaction between man and his social-cultural environment, the mediation is one of the fundamental concepts in this theory. Since it is the learning that promotes the intellectual development and it occurs from an intervention process of an intermediate element between the subject and the object of knowledge, this relation stops being straight and direct and passes to a mediated one. In the present investigation we focused in the process of pedagogical mediation, which has specific characteristics of systematization and intentionality. Once that the mediation helps in the student’s intellectual development it must advance to the development processes, acting in the Proximal Development Zone (ZDP), which corresponds to the intellectual condition of the subject in the moment of learning. The ZDP refers to what the subject does not do on his own but to what he can do with the help of a grown up or an efficient companion. According to Vygotsky, the good teaching acts in the proximal development zone and qualitatively modifies its concepts. In this research the WebQuest was used as a mediator between the subject and the object of knowledge, and it showed to be an efficient tool in this process, since the scientific concepts were remade by the students and, mostly, it improved significantly their comprehension and meanings related to the cells contents and the classification of live beings.