Teaching Astronomy: a didactic approach based on the Theory of General Relativity

From the analysis of an articulation between the cognitive perspectives of David Ausubel’s meaningful learning and the educational ones of the research communities present in Matthew Lipman’s philosophy program, this article discusses the development of an educational product on astronomy topics. The application was made in a third-year class of public high school in the Federal District. The classes were divided into four major themes: universal gravitation and the solar system; general relativity; black holes; and gravitational lenses. Diversified content, activities and approaches were mediated by digital educational technologies and the evaluations considered proficiency as levels of expression of the respective psychological and educational theories. The results revealed the students’ enthusiasm and interest in the proposed themes. It was also possible to verify indicators of the development of reasoning skills, concept formation, investigation, translation, and evidence of significant learning. Finally, it was possible to conclude that the insertion of themes related to astronomy and modern and contemporary physics are viable in high school, even in the precarious context of the public school, in contrast to the current physics curriculum, worn out and based mainly on classical and methodological approaches that are often diffuse.

Keywords
Physics teaching; Astronomy; General relativity; Meaningful learning; Communities of inquiry