Abstract:

The importance of science in the children’s, youngsters and adults global development and, specifically, the importance in the cognitive and citizenship development is undeniable. In fact, science teaching has deserved more and more the attention of the educative community, teachers and legislators, from precocious ages.

This way, we will try to characterize Portuguese reality in what concerns the legislative underlying bases and, simultaneously, to understand the interpretation that is done by teachers of the 1st Cycle of Basic Education (children between 6 and 10 years old), resorting for such to the technique of the semi-structured interview. This constitutes a small exploratory study in the investigation of a project of post-graduation course that bends on science teaching in 1st Cycle of Basic Education.

Regarding the legislation, science teaching has occupied, in the last decades, an essential importance in educative politics. In Portugal, science teaching constitutes one of the most propagated preoccupations of the current government, as we can note in his Program (2005), enclosed in the consolidation of Basic Education. In fact, this Program considers science a priority area in education, affirming the obligatoriness of experimental teaching in science, during the 9 years of Basic Education, with appropriate evaluation, along with other basic areas as Portuguese Language, Mathematics and a Foreign Language.

The 1st Cycle of Basic Education curriculum contemplates citizenship education, curriculum subject areas - Portuguese, Mathematic, Environment Studies and Expression: artistic and physical/motor. It also includes non-subject-based curriculum areas as project area, accompanied study and civics. This curriculum still adds that all the work developed by pupils will integrate inquiry and experimental activities suitable to the nature of the different areas, namely in science teaching.
So, in this Cycle, science teaching is made in the context of the subject area Environment Studies, which joins the main branches of knowledge – scientifically, technologically and socially – that contribute to the understanding of the world, being composed by several subjects: History, Geography, Natural Sciences, amongst others.

We intend to present a short study about the way teachers interpret the curricular documents and transpose them for their practice, realizing the implications of these directions in teachers’ practices. We intend to understand, also, the conception that teachers have about the importance of science in this learning cycle and how they work scientific contents.

Keywords:

Portuguese education system, science teaching, primary education, teachers’ conceptions.