Abstract:

Practical activities (PA) are a very important component in all textbook. They can correspond of a significant set of various tasks, but all have the ultimate goal of contributing to develop skills on student´s. In Portuguese high school, Paleomagnetism is a subject which is part of the curriculum of the 12th Geology. However, despite not being include in the formal program of Biology and Geology (BG) of the 10th year, when there are taught ‘The indirect methods for the study of the Geosphere’, this content is often discussed. This study presents the results obtained from a qualitative evaluation to all BG textbooks of the 10th year (n=5) and Geology of the 12th year (n=3). The research question was: do the textbooks manifest, on the chapter of Paleomagnetism, the importance of PA? For this question, we defined a specific goal: to evaluate the PA proposed in the textbooks, within the scope of this subject, disciplines and schooling years. The analysis instrument consisted of a grid composed of a category, ‘Proposal of PA involving paleomagnetism’, with two subcategories ‘Status of the activities’ and ‘Type of activity’. In the 10th year the analysis focused on the programmatic content ‘Methods for the study of the interior of the geosphere (the indirect methods)’ which is part of the ‘Theme III – Understanding the structure and dynamics of the geosphere’; in the 12th it was selected ‘The first steps of a new theory. The Plate Tectonics Theory, a programmatic content integrant of the ‘Theme I – from the Continental Drift Theory to the Plate Tectonics Theory.

The analysis of the results allows us to conclude that:
1) the textbooks of 10th BG have a significantly lower number of PA than those of Geology 12th;
2) according to the parameters defined, the PA involving Paleomagnetism exercises appear, essentially, at the end of the chapter referring to the subject or, in addition, in the activity books that accompany the textbooks;
3) exist a predominance of PA with the use of pencil and paper in all the textbooks analyzed.

Keywords:

Practical activities, textbooks, paleomagnetism, high school.