A motivação como produção de sentidos subjetivos: pedagogia de projetos no ensino e aprendizagem de ciências

Abstract

The motivation to learn is a permanent concern of educators and researchers. Among the teaching approaches designed to motivate students stands out the Project Pedagogy, which values the student as protagonist of their learning. Despite the importance attributed to motivation, the researches carried out do not always explain a theoretical-methodological reference to deal with the subject. Often, the motivation is thought as a direct result of the activities planned by the teacher and the cognitive and affective factors involved in the process are understood in a dichotomous way. I defend the thesis that González Rey's Theory of Subjectivity expands our understanding of the motivation to teach and learn Sciences in the context of Project Pedagogy, by enabling the interpretation of configurations of complex, singular subjective senses that emerge in different contexts. To support this statement, I carried out two studies on the motivation to teach and learn, based on this theoreticalmethodological approach, in order to understand the subjective configurations of the subjects in relation to teaching or learning with projects. In the first one, I analyzed the subjective senses of a Science teacher to work with projects. In the second, I analyzed the subjective senses of a group of students involved in a theater project at school. The information was constructed through phrase complements, writing, observations and informal conversations. The subjective senses were interpreted from the indicators constructed in the research, constituting case studies of the participants. Both in the study with the teacher and in the study with the students, I understood the motivation of the subjects as resulting from configurations of complex and singular subjective senses that do not depend only on the current situation, but take into account their past experiences and interactions with other people, in other contexts. These results support the thesis that the Theory of Subjectivity makes an important contribution on the understanding of the motivation to teach and to learn Sciences in the context of Project Pedagogy, with important implications for research in the area, for teaching and for teacher training.