As concepções de educação de jovens e adultos presentes nas pesquisas sobre o ensino de química

Abstract

Youth and Adult Education (EJA) is a modality of basic education that highlights the contradictions in education operationalized in capitalist society and aimed at the working class. This is a modality which, historically, has been intended for its target audience to be a compensatory and subordinate education. We consider the existence of two conceptions of EJA in school education, assistance-compensatory education and the perspective of education as a right. The compensatory-assistance concept that historically permeates EJA, practiced in school spaces, has always been linked to literacy and the appropriation of utilitarian knowledge, limiting the subjects' access to systematized knowledge and, consequently, to chemical knowledge. We assume that academic investigative activity can contribute to overcoming such a concept of education. Thus, this research aims to identify the EJA conceptions present in theses (T) and dissertations (D) produced between 1996 and 2019 and which were engaged in researching the teaching of chemistry in EJA in school spaces and how these conceptions materialize in the researched chemistry teaching. This research uses the state of knowledge methodology. The CAPES Theses and Dissertations Catalog was the database chosen to inventory the productions. A total of 33 dissertations and no thesis were identified in the 5 Brazilian regions and in 21 HEIs. Public institutions account for 30 productions. The first surveys date back to 2008, 12 years after the institutionalization of EJA as a modality of basic education, in accordance with the Law of Guidelines and Bases of Education. Researches show the predominance of the compensatory-assistentialist conception of EJA, present in 30 dissertations. The assistencialist-compensatory conception of EJA and its formative projects (contextual and plural) manifests itself in different ways, presenting the following characteristics: a) focus on the teacher-student dialogue and on the incorporation of daily problems in the pedagogical practice; b) discussion about social, technological and labor advances; c) empirical approach and use of experimental activities in teaching; d) consider the school and knowledge as a tool to improve the quality of life and; e) formation of a critical, reflective, participative citizen who has his citizenship built. Such productions, however, are not intended to discuss the vertical organization of society and, by not doing so, contribute to its maintenance. The research points to the need to consider the teaching of chemistry and school education as a tool for confronting social inequalities present in Brazilian society, making use of a training project that goes beyond what is stated.