Teaching Knowledge in the Area of Science Education: A Systematic Review

Abstract

In this work, we carried out a systematic review of literature aiming to understand how teaching knowledge has been investigated in the area of Science Teaching in Brazil and to discuss the main contributions and limitations of these investigations. We’ve done our research on the Bank of Thesis and Dissertations of CAPES and on the Portal for Periodicals of CAPES, using a thematic, but not temporal, approach. Based on the defined criteria of inclusion and exclusion we’ve obtained a total of 64 works (theses, dissertations, and articles). Through these works we’ve identified and characterized five axes of investigation: knowledge mobilized by teachers of Science; teaching knowledge and the professional identity; processes of construction and development of the teaching knowledge; contributions of courses and formation programs on the constitution of teaching knowledge; other focuses. We’ve observed that the researches that seek only to identify the teaching knowledge under an individual analysis perspective are the ones which prevail, especially methods of categorization and content analysis. Limitations such as that point out the need for an effort to amplify the scope of the investigations on the thematic of form and to include and consider, under an ethnographical perspective, the analysis of theses teaching knowledge as a social phenomenon, which is constructed on the interaction between teacher and student, with his peers and the other members of the educational community.