This work presents the state of the art of the recent national publication on the teaching and learning of physics that can be a starting point to first approaching the area. The initial analysis, that distributed all the papers published since 2000 to 2007 in the themes used in academic conferences related to the teaching of physics showed that the publication concentrates on the theme of Teaching and Learning. This trend expresses an instrumentalist view of the educational research and a technicist view of education that aim basically to supply teachers with resources to improve students' performance. The abstracts' content analysis showed that, in general, the emphasis is put on the cognitive aspects, not making justice to the complexity of the process. This result indicates the necessity of investment on theoretic research, which allows a deeper refiection and comprehension of all the dimensions involved in the educational process. The distribution of a hundred papers on the teaching and learning of physics in subthemes indicated that research is supported on a tripod: development of experiments for didactic laboratory, which concentrates great part of the papers, followed by proposals of teaching methodologies and strategies and elaboration of instructional resources. The predominance of descriptive papers suggests the necessity of fomenting the research culture that leads to the production of knowledge.
teaching and learning of physics; state of the artm; academic publication
