Feira de Ciências: Uma Investigação do Processo de Avaliação

Abstract

Federal Institutes provide professional education in the perspective of integral education recognizing the students in all their dimensions, enabling them to actively participate as transforming agents, with work as an educational principle and science as a pedagogical principle. In this context, we acknowledge Science Fairs as important social, scientific, and cultural spaces. Considering the important relation between the educational proposal taken by the Federal Institutes and the Science Fairs, with the latter contributing to the achievement of the former, this research aimed at identifying the perception of those involved in the Campo Grande Science and Technology Fair – Fecintec related to the purpose of the event, which is focused on basic education at the elementary and high school levels. The qualitative investigation about the evaluation process of the works at Fecintec pointed out the main weaknesses and potentialities about the evaluation process at the Fair, and also reinforced the multiple contributions that the event provides to students and school institutions, stimulating the development of research since elementary school and expanding the scientific literacy in schools. The data obtained were analyzed using the content analysis technique, based on Bardin. The results point out the importance of Fecintec as a social, scientific, and cultural space, as well as its contributions to scientific education in basic education. However, they demonstrate the need of training for evaluators and adequacy of the venues where it occurs. It was evident that the evaluation model adopted at Fecintec has the characteristics of an assessment, classifying, selecting, and excluding, in disagreement with the formation proposal of the Federal Institutes.