ANALYSIS OF THE DEMAND AND CHARACTER OF STUDENTS' QUESTIONS FROM THE OBSERVATION OF A PHENOMENON

Abstract

The aim was to characterize the students questions in the face of demands and character. The approach is qualitative exploratory. The participants were 187 students, both elementary and high school, from four public schools in different cities of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. After observing a phenomenon, the students generated questions, which were categorized based on their demands and character. It was evidenced: i) in both school levels the demands of the questions, mostly, were by causal explanation; ii) elementary school students proposed more questions centered on the macroscopic observation of the phenomenon; and iii) high school students formulated more questions of generalization or definition and prediction. In general, there was a prevalence of informative questions, possibly indicating the relationship between the type of inquiry and conventional teaching that values the mere transmission and reproduction of knowledge.