A longitudinal study of an initial teacher training student representations about Teaching of Physics

Abstract

Assuming the relevance of initial teacher training courses as a central moment of constitution, consolidation and reformulation of representations that constitute the teaching professional identity, we aim to understand how aspects of the teaching professional identity develop throughout a Physics Degree course, focusing on the analysis of how the undergraduate students' representations about a Physics class and about the role of Physics in the formation of Basic Education students change throughout the course. For this, supported by notions of Discourse Analysis that had Michel Pêcheux as one of the founders, we elaborated three questionnaires, which were applied at the beginning of the course of a given group in a Brazilian federal public institution, two years after the beginning of the course of that group and almost four years after the beginning of the course, thus, characterizing a longitudinal study. We took for analysis the answers given by a student who participated in the three questionnaires and who finished the course shortly after answering the last one. The analyzes show that their representations about a Physics class and about the functions of teaching Physics do not changed in essence. Nevertheless, these representations have become more grounded throughout the course. Specifically in the last questionnaire, it was possible to notice in their answers movements of inscription in ideological formations associated with teaching and research in Physics Teaching, insertions in these discursive spaces, appropriations of what/how is said in these discursive spaces. Their participation in projects such as PIBID and Residência Pedagógica stood out as conditions for the production of their answers and alterations in their representations, as well as the development of a Scientific Initiation project and the contact with research in the area of Physics Teaching provided in mandatory curricular components attended in the second half of the course.