Toda física por água abaixo: a construção e utilização de um protótipo de submarino para o ensino de física

Abstract

The present paper is an overture classroom application of David Ausubel’s Learning Theory, the meaningful learning, and the Psychology Theory of Conceptual Fields of Gerard Vergnaud. The application of some of the activities in this paper was developed in 2009, in two distinct classes of the high school technical course program in the Ponta Grossa Technological Federal University of Parana Campus - UTFPR. It was developed a qualitative research which pointed out the main existing problems in the students’ conceptual thinking concerning to the Physics topic researched, whose result was utilized to the elaboration of the presented activities. Thus, finding to determine conformity with the theories mentioned above to expand the applied activities and suggest others, in order to try to solve the conceptual problems observed in the research, surely aiming to improve the quality of Teaching Physics. Therefore, the activities applied in the classroom like the ones suggested in the paper were lined mainly in the utilization of a submarine prototype and some accessories, in a sequential way, whose main goal was the integration of several Physics concepts analyzed in the discipline along with its application. So that, the prototype was foreseen to be, as a initial reference, as a reference to be reused in the following activities to teach various Physics Concepts, providing to the student a review and an enlargement of these concepts, facilitating him the formation or the readequation of their initial concepts and their mental models in a more appropriate manner, making it easier itsinterpretation and a better understanding of the subject which will be studied.