The use of the didactic game “Guess Which?” as an event conducive to revisiting the error and raising awareness of organic chemistry concepts

Abstract

In the interest of stimulating alternatives that counteract a teaching reality that leads Brazilian students, especially from public schools, to a lack of knowledge, Teachers College-Columbia University, in partnership with the Lemann Foundation, invested in strengthening the performance of Brazilian researchers, launching the notice “Researching Teaching and Learning: An Equity Imperative for Teacher Education”. Contemplated in this notice, the Center for Investigations, Development and Study of Games in Education (NIDEJE) proposed to investigate how situations of discursive interaction provided using didactic games can be a factor of change in a teaching scenario, in which doubts, and errors are disregarded as opportunities for (re)signifying understandings. For this, the didactic game “Guess Which?” was applied in a public high school in the Pernambuco countryside, the first application of the didactic game with the exclusive participation of students who had difficulties in the content of organic functions and the second application with groups composed with some students who had difficulties and others who had better academic performance in the chemistry subject. The externalization of students' thoughts in their planning, discussions, and reflections that occurred during the game were recorded and later analyzed through microgenetic analysis. In this way, we analyze the discursive interactions provided by the zones of imminent development (ZID) formed in the groups and the implication of the constitutions of the groups in the dynamics of this ZID and in the students' awareness of their mistakes being revisited. Finally, we observe that the didactic game can involve and motivate students to a collective action, which encourages them to make justified choices. Thus, they provide a favorable environment for reflections on the application of concepts and awareness not only about them, but also about their mistakes and difficulties, which helps them to overcome them. The quality of these reflections is favored by the ZID formed by students and professors by promoting the review of positions, justifications and resignifying concepts and procedures. We also emphasize that the role of the teacher as an interlocutor in the ZID grows in relevance when the constitution of groups is formed exclusively by students with more difficulty in the content.

Keywords

• jogo didático
• erro
• tomada de consciência
• zdi