DISCURSIVE REPRESENTATIONS OF EXPERIMENTATION FROM MASTERS STUDENTS IN SCIENCE EDUCATION

ABSTRACT:

The article aims to understand how students in a masters course in science education represent experimentation in education discursively. To this end, we examined two elements of social practice, social actors and the experiment-related actions in institutionalized modalities. We use the theoretical methodological contributions from critical discourse analysis. As a result, we identified recurrence of nominalization of the term experiment/experimentation and, consequently, the erasure of the teacher in the conduction of the teaching-learning process, as well as the student’s. We conclude that discursive choices point to the existence of limits in experimental practices building, due to either material aspects or superficial knowledge of the masters students to face the issues of teaching.

Keywords:
Experimentation; Social actor; Discursive representations; Critical discourse analysis