ASTRONOMY THEMES IN SCIENCE FAIRS: REFLECTIONS ON CURRICULA AND INTERDISCIPLINARITY

Abstract

The paper presents a survey based on the analysis of annals from nine Science Fair editions promoted by a communitary university in Rio Grande do Sul State aiming to identify contents and possible interdisciplinary approaches in school research concerning Astronomy themes. Under the theoretical perspective that considers the fairs rich spaces to encourage scientific initiation and education, we work with the premise that these contexts provide much greater autonomy for choosing study themes than it usually occurs in formal educational contexts. Therefore the presence of more or less astronomy themes might encourage teaching and researching practices inspired by interdisciplinarity. The documentary analysis identified sixteen studies connected to Astronomy in Elementary, Middle and High School levels emphasizing the preference for themes connected to Astronautics and rockets, followed by Earth and Cosmology. Regarding interdisciplinarity, different levels of integration were identified - from inner connections between themes to the integration of two or more school subjects.