INTERLOCUTIONS BETWEEN HIGH SCHOOL CHEMICAL LITERACY AND THE OBJECTS OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES TEXTBOOKS OF THE PNLD 2021
chemical literacy; textbooks; PNLD; high school reform.
The aim of this research was to investigate how the Natural Sciences textbooks approved in the 2021 PNLD Guide present the conceptual content and constitutive elements that favor the development of Chemical Literacy, considering the reference documents of Basic Education, BNCC and LDB, in the context of the Brazilian High School Reform. To this end, the following research problem was posed: How does the conceptual content present in the textbooks approved by the PNLD 2021, which are based on the LDB and BNCC, influence Chemical Literacy in the state of Rio Grande do Norte? The qualitative study, based on Stake (2011), used Bardin's Content Analysis (2011) as its analytical method, in six volumes of the “Multiversos - Ciências da Natureza” collection. Four main dimensions were adopted for the analysis, based on the literature on Chemical Literacy: i) Aspects of the Nature of Science in Chemistry; ii) Chemistry in Everyday Life; iii) Knowledge of the Nature of Matter; iv) Higher Order Learning Skills (Shwartz et al., 2004, 2005, 2006, 2013). Based on the analysis of the textbooks in the aforementioned collection, 29 chemistry concepts were catalogued, in which we found that these dimensions are covered throughout the conceptual content, boxes and complementary sources. The first corresponds to 41.3%, the second to 82.75%, the third to 65.5% and the fourth to 37.9% of the conceptual content. Considering our references and the analysis carried out, we conclude that the collection does not provide ample support for the development of Chemical Literacy that stimulates critical analysis and problem solving, which are fundamental for understanding chemical concepts that are intrinsic/present in man's relations with society. In this research, we identified only two concepts (C8 and C6), corresponding to 6.89% of the Chemistry knowledge objects analyzed, which fully corroborate the process of developing AQ in high school in RN, through the current reform.