The contribution of bibliographical references of teaching plans to the characterization of domains: a study in the Biofuel course at Centro Paula Souza

Abstract

This research analyzes the bibliographical references indicated in the courses taught in two units of the Technological Course in Biofuels at the Centro Paula Souza in order to characterize the scientific domain founding the training of their former students, mapping the citation network by block of courses - basic and professional-, identifying the theoretical-methodological proximity between the two units. The corpus of analysis consists of 284 references retrieved at the Sao Paulo State Technological College (Fatec) Jaboticabal unit, and 238 references at the Fatec Aracatuba unit. The methodology is developed through a bibliometric study of relational citation analysis procedures associated with Social Network Analysis. The results showed a moderate overlap of citation identities between the two units for the group of subjects of the basic axis and the group of subjects of Agricultural Production Process, Management, Final Undergraduate Project and Transversal subjects. On the other hand, the overlap was less significant for the Biofuel Production Processes axis. The study concluded that the adopted methodology allowed to characterize the scientific domain founding of the technologist's training in Biofuels, in its two units, as well as to identify their similarities and specificities regarding their citation identities, constituted from the references adopted in the courses.