Educomunicação e educação científica: possibilidades e limites do diálogo

Abstract

This qualitative-nature research aimed mainly to investigate potentialities and limitations of an educommunicative pedagogical intervention that encouraged dialogue with students about scientific knowledge on the topic Water. It was carried out in São Francisco do Paraguaçu, a rural Quilombola community of the Recôncavo region of Bahia state, a village that experiences different processes concerning water: the existence of historically valued springs, the timid presence of sanitary sewage system, the irregular distribution of the resource in the houses and the pollution of the Iguape Bay, which receives water from Bay of All Saints and of Paraguaçu River. To meet its main objective, this study underpinned in five specific goals, namely: to understand the processes socially built about water by the community members; to structure a Young News Agency (YNA) as an educommunicative intervention; to analyse the dialogue construction of young people with scientific knowledge during the intervention; to feedback previously understood perceptions regarding the topic; and, lastly, to discuss the potentialities and limitations of the educommunicative paradigm for the type of expected dialogue. For each of the imposed stages, specific methodological procedures were used: first, to understand the processes built about water by the community, we apprehended the ethnomethodology principles and the main strategies were participant observation in addition to carrying out informal and semi-structured interviews with young people, community leaders, inhabitans and workers from Bahia Water and Sanitation Company S.A. (business corporation). The implementation of YNA, in turn, caracterized here as a non-formal education activity, followed the educommunicative method as the process vertebral axis, associated to the principles of a STS (Science, Technology and Society) education. Six young people attended it producing jornalistic texts, photographs and videos about water and sanitary sewage system, relating and reflecting pieces of information gotten through research in books, magazines, interviews with teachers and village’s inhabitants. This research resulted in two analysis instances: 1) Interpretation of the processes built about water by the community; 2) Analysis of the planning and execution of the YNA. The results show that, although the performance of a work of such importance presents a range of difficulties related to, mainly, school environment, and the educommunicator’s role, the gains raised by the intervention, which was underpinned by investigation, production, critical analysis, student protagonism and creativity, suggest a new way of working on kinds of science with community’s young people, bringing knowledge as closer as possible to their realities. Our theory is that this is the path to a liberating scientific education that helps individuals transform their lives through thoughtful and well-discussed actions.