CHEMICAL EDUCATION UNDER THE PERSPECTIVES OF INITIATING TEACHERS: DILEMMAS AND CONFLICTS

Abstract

The teacher entrance into the professional´s life effectively marks the beginning of teaching, since this period the beginner teacher starts having contact with the school context, real lives, teaching situations, become familiar with the current school culture, struggle for be part of the professional body of the school and assume responsibility for the educational process of one or more classes of students. It’s an adaptation phase and the new experience is always difficult and disconcerting, the expression - "shock of reality" - diffused by Veenman (1988) that is used by several authors to represent the initial difficulties of the beginning teachers. In this context, this work has the central question to investigate the experiences, conflicts and the relationship with the knowledge of teachers and chemistry teachers at the beginning of their careers, who teachs secondary schools in the city of João Pessoa. This is a qualitative research, it´s an ethnographic case study - a type of research that has recently appeared in the educational literature. With regard to the difficulties encountered in the school reality, the teachers in their speeches showed some concern about how to teach chemistry, how to change the negative conception that students have in spite of the discipline Chemistry, posture before students and some difficulties arising from the Mandatory Stage executed from incoherent form. According to dilemmas and conflicts reported in this research, it´s possible to conclude that the "reality shock" cited by several authors in their studies is still present today. Shock caused by a difficulty in relating practice and theory studied during graduation and dealing with school reality, such as a relatively high number of classes, of students and a mandatory internship without proper guidance.