Análise sobre a abordagem da biologia evolutiva em livros didáticos utilizados no município de Barra do Garças, MT.

Abstract

Textbooks were conceived as differentiated pedagogical instruments because of their potential to reach a frontier that was previously not encompassed by education. The National Textbook Plan (Plano Nacional do Livro Didático, PNLD) governs its use in Brazilian public schools, where teachers working in different regions of the country evaluate the books and suggest the use of some of them. Textbooks and their use in the classroom environment are still a presentday research area, since some subjects lack an adequate pedagogical approach to provide the correct understanding of some specific topics being studied. One of those topics is Evolutionary Biology, which has not been adequately treated in many textbooks, probably because of its broad social and scientific implications. The aim of this work was to perform a review of the Evolutionary Biology content present in the textbooks suggested by the 2015 PNLD, in order to verify how the content of evolution has been approached in this teaching instrument in the public education of the Municipality of Barra do Garças, MT. The review was carried out in seven books suggested by the 2015 PNLD, through a quanti-qualitative analysis. The presence or absence of guiding definitions for the understanding of the content of evolutionary biology was observed and discussed. The definitions of natural selection and evolution stood out among the others, and were the most present in all the analyzed books. The definitions of common ancestry and phylogeny were absent in most of the analyzed books. We found that the way in which evolutionary biology is presented in some textbooks has been improved over the years, following some of the guidelines of the Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais, which suggest that evolution is used as an integrating axis of science and biology teaching. However, some definitions, such as the concept of biological evolution itself, should be strictly explicit for the students, and we suggest that biology teachers should complement the subjects and provide the adequate definitions in the classroom environment.