THE EMBODIMENT OF CHEMICAL ENTITIES IN MULTIMODAL PERFORMANCES IN SCIENCE CLASSES

Abstract

We started from the premise that the representation and the concept are directly related regarding the teaching and learning of Chemistry. In this article we analyze two episodes of teaching in which corporal performances were executed aiming to investigate the meanings produced in the classes where the body was used to represent a Chemical entity. These episodes were extracted from videos produced by two research groups in Chemistry teaching. The analyses evidenced the modal resources used by the teachers in the representation with the body and the possible meanings produced with the students. The analyses indicated that the students noticed the behavior of the chemical entity in the subjects that represented the atoms and that this embodiment presented affordances that helped the understanding of the concepts explored in the performance. The data lead us to argue that the body and the movements also produce learnings. Representing a chemical entity using the body showed to be a rational and affective strategy in the understanding of concepts, which brings implications to the training of teachers, in the sense of overcoming epistemological and affective obstacles.