WHEN GENDER AND SCIENCE LEARNING MEET: AN ANALYSIS OF LESSONS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Abstract

Gender has been one of the most debated topics when talking about Brazilian education in recent years. In this paper, we discuss gender relations in the context of the disciplinary field of natural sciences. Science Education research has been dedicated to the analysis of gender relations in recent decades. Despite advances in the field, there are few studies that relate scientific concepts’ learning and gender in classroom daily life. In the present study, we explored discursive interactions in an elementary school classroom in order to analyze how gender interweaves learning opportunities in science lessons. For this, we rely on Butler’s theoretical proposals on gender, and guide the analyzes from Ethnography in Education as a logic of research. The results indicate that conceptual knowledge of science was being constructed by the students through the reiteration/challenge of the gender norm over daily life science class. Such negotiations played a central role in learning about sexual dimorphism. The study joins other research that defend the relevance of discussions about gender in education, including school science and its concepts.